


The French Mistake

by ironychan



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, I'm Going to Hell, Names Have Been Changed To Protect The Innocent, RPF, i am intrigued but not surprised that 'i'm going to hell' is a frequently used tag on this site
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2019-10-08 08:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 106,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironychan/pseuds/ironychan
Summary: When Steve, Natasha, and Thor get together to thwart Loki's escape attempt, they find themselves along for the ride to an alternate universe where there are no Avengers, just spoiled Hollywood actors with hauntingly familiar faces.  This is stupid, but I wrote it as a tribute of sorts to Stan Lee and am sharing it in that capacity.





	1. The Kulturhistorisk Museum Heist

**Author's Note:**

> In writing about what's supposed to be the 'real world', I've used the names of actual people wherever I could find them. The exceptions are a few cases in which I've substituted a fictional character so I won't place an actual human being in a villain role, and the names of children.

Steve hadn’t been expecting visitors in Wakanda, but if he had, he would have known which ones to look for.  Stark wouldn’t be ready to talk to him for a long while yet, Bruce was missing, Thor was in Asgard, and a lot of the others were in prison or in hiding, but Natasha – Natasha might well stop by to say hello.  So it was a surprise of sorts, and yet not _quite_ , when she did.

They met in the botanical gardens in the capital, and Nat smiled as he came up to give her a hug.  “Good to see you, Steve,” she said, putting her arms around him.

“Good to see you, too,” he replied.  “Another new haircut?”

She’d cut her hair short again, in a chin-length bob but without the curls.  “Yeah.  Clint calls this one the Hot Android Chick.”

“That sounds like Clint,” Steve agreed.  He sat down on the round bench that encircled the central fountain – there was moving water everywhere here, creating a mist in the air that nourished over two thousand uniquely Wakandan species of plants, and helped cool everybody in the blistering African sun.  The air was thick with their perfume.  “Is he…?”

“He’s back home.”  Nat remained standing.  “Don’t worry about the others.  That’s not why I’m here.”

Her words put him suddenly on his guard.  Of course, Steve thought, Natasha wasn’t here on a social visit – she just wasn’t the type.  She was here for a reason, and not a trivial one.  Was her new haircut a disguise?

“What happened?” Steve asked.

Nat looked around.  There were visitors enjoying the gardens, and botanists working with some of the plants, but nobody was close enough to eavesdrop.  A few, particularly children, were sneaking glances at Steve and Natasha, but that was because the pair were probably the first whites they’d ever seen in person.  The Wakandans were, by and large, a people who respected each other’s privacy.

Even so, Natasha offered Steve a hand to get up, and led him back into a bower where shelves housed at least fifty different types of orchid, from tiny ones that looked more like iridescent insects than flowers to a giant species whose frilly white blooms were nearly eight inches across.  She took one more quick look outside to make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted, then leaned in closer to Steve.

“Thor’s back,” she said quietly.

A rustle overhead made both of them look up, but it was only a troupe of colobus monkeys making their way through the trees.  Steve lowered his gaze again.

“What’s he found?” he asked.  Thor had left after the defeat of Ultron, hoping to learn more about the Infinity Stones.  If he’d returned, he must have something important to tell them.

“Not what he expected,” said Natasha.  “Loki’s alive.  Apparently he was hiding on Asgard, pretending to be somebody else, until he found where they’d stashed the tesseract.  Once he did, he took it and ran off.”

That _was_ bad.  The Battle of new York honestly wasn’t even one of the more traumatic things that had happened to Steve, but fighting off eight-foot aliens in the canyons between skyscrapers hadn’t been any _fun_ , either.  Steve absolutely agreed with Stark in hoping it never happened again, even if he wasn’t so enthusiastic about the other man’s attempts to guarantee that.  “Has he gone back to the Chi’Tauri?”

Nat shook her head.  “As far as Thor can tell, he slipped out by a portal that leads to Earth.  Thor wants us to help bring him back.”

“Why us?” asked Steve.  “I’m a wanted criminal, don’t forget.”  Steve himself couldn’t forget, even when he sometimes wished he could.  Every time it slipped from his mind for a few minutes, something popped up again to remind him.  “Why not Stark and the rest?”

“Stark’s got a lot on his plate right now,” said Natasha.  “He’s the one who’s having to deal with all the politicians on this, and he’s constantly in he public eye.  If Stark gets involved, then the media finds out, and we have to deal with the Sokovia Accords.  We’re hoping to keep it low-key.  Pun not intended,” she added, the corner of her mouth twitching.

Steve gave her a withering look for the joke, but he did understand her reasoning.  “If people hear the name _Loki_ , they might panic.”

“It doesn’t improve our image any to have him back, either,” Nat agreed.  The Avengers, or whatever was left of them, needed all the good PR they could get.  “The idea is to recapture him quietly, no fuss.  Hence, no Stark.”

“How do we do it, then?” asked Steve.  Loki had come quietly in Germany, but only so that he could cause the problems in person.  Outside of that, he hadn’t done _anything_ quietly, and the tesseract was not a quiet object.  If Loki were really on Earth, it was frankly astonishing that the whole planet didn’t already know it.

“Thor’s going to help,” Nat promised.

Steve snorted.  “Because Thor’s all about quiet.”

“He’s asked us to meet him at the Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo, undercover,” Natasha went on, as if Steve hadn’t said anything.  “I gave him a bit of advice about what ‘undercover’ entails but I don’t know if there was a point.  Blending in isn’t exactly in his nature.  But he’s promised to provide us with a containment unit for the tesseract and some weaponry.”

The situation just didn’t sound right.  “Why would Loki be hiding, though?  Especially if he’s already got the tesseract.  Why isn’t he swaggering around declaring himself king again?”

“Thor’s theory is that he’s looking for something else, probably something that’s in Norway, near where HYDRA found the tesseract in the first place,” Nat said.  “He’s not entirely sure Loki _has_ an overarching plan because apparently he often doesn’t, but he’s got to want to _use_ the tesseract for something.  It’s not a very good doorstop.”

Steve had a bad feeling about the whole thing, but at the same time, he couldn’t say no.  Not when the tesseract was involved.  The damned thing just wouldn’t leave him alone, would it?  He’d already died for it once, and then had been relieved to see it shipped off to another planet… yet here it was again, as if determined to devil Steve until the end of time.  If the tesseract were a part of this, then he _had_ to do something.

Although if Steve were going to be honest with himself, he probably would have gone even without the tesseract’s involvement.  What he’d said to Stark was true – when Steve saw a bad situation, he couldn’t just ignore it, especially when he was sometimes the only person who _could_ do something about it.  That just wasn’t the way he worked.

 Overhead, the monkeys rustled again.  Steve nodded.  “All right,” he said.  “Let me just talk to T’Challa.”

* * *

 It was around sunset the next day when Steve and Natasha boarded a small craft, built to look like an Avro RJ but capable of much greater range, at the city’s airport.  Steve had dyed his hair brown and Natasha had bleached hers blonde, and they were dressed in t-shirts and jeans as if they were tourists.  It reminded Steve of going undercover at the mall in Washington, though now they’d had a little more time to prepare.  At least there weren’t going to be any HYDRA goons looking for them.

Probably.  Scandinavia and the secrets hidden there had been one of HYDRA’s primary areas of interest, and might still be.  They would have to be on the lookout for surprises.

“So,” Steve said, settling down in his seat.  “Two of the only _slightly_ super members of the Avengers against Loki.  Remind me how we’re gonna keep this quiet again?”  It had taken all of them before – of course, that time, Loki had an army.  Hopefully there wouldn’t be a repeat of that, but Steve still had trouble believing that Loki was skulking around keeping his head down.  It just didn’t sound right.

“Thor has assured me he has a plan,” said Nat.  “Besides, there’s really nobody else he can ask.  I’ve already explained why Stark can’t get involved, Clint wants no part of Loki or the tesseract, Scott’s serving two years under house arrest, and Bruce… yeah.”  She sighed.

She had a point there.  “Did you tell him about our, uh… disagreement?”  The media had called it _Civil War_ , which Steve thought was ridiculous hyperbole for something that had, at its worst, been a dozen people duking it out in an airport parking lot.

“Of course I did,” said Nat.  “If I hadn’t explained about the Accords, he would have just marched in with his hammer swinging.”

“What did he say?” asked Steve.

“Not much, but I get the feeling he thinks it’s just mortals being petty and tiny again.”

That figured.

The Wakandan aircraft didn’t need a takeoff roll.  It lifted smoothly from the ground and ascended almost vertically to its cruising altitude – it would make an approach landing at the airport in Casablanca, where Steve and Nat would transfer to a normal passenger flight bound for Europe, in order to maintain anonymity.  Steve leaned on the window, watching the buildings slowly drop out of sight below them, and wisps of cloud start to appear.

“I should have asked this earlier,” Nat said, “but… how have you been?”

The view outside rotated slowly as the craft’s nose turned north.  “I’m working on it,” Steve said.  He felt like he was stuck in limbo, and would be until Bucky was better.  “You?”

“Working on it,” Natasha echoed.

Steve wasn’t sure he should ask, but after a moment’s doubt, he forced himself to.  “Stark?”

“He’s working on a lot of things,” said Natasha.  “He and Miss Potts made up, so he’s not so alone anymore.  He said you sent him the world’s douchiest apology letter.”

Steve sat up straight.  “I sent him _an_ apology letter,” he said.  “What was wrong with it?”

“Other than the fact it said _sorry you couldn’t see I was right the whole time_?” Nat asked pointedly.  “You didn’t even address the main reason he was mad at you in the first place, or the fact that _you_ used to lecture _him_ for keeping secrets from you.  It’s gonna take a lot more than that before he forgives you, Steve.”

Steve sat back again, scowling.  “Maybe I don’t care if he forgives me.”

“You asked how he was,” Nat reminded him.  “Clearly you care on _some_ level.”

“So you’re still on his side,” Steve observed.

“There are no _sides_ in this, Rogers!” said Natasha.  “We’re all on the same side, and by letting our enemies play us against each other we’re just falling into their hands.  Trust me, I know how this works, intimately.  You know it, and Tony knows it, but if you really want me to come down with one or the other?  The Accords exist and they’re something we’re going to have to work either with or around.  You’re going to have to compromise eventually because they won’t go away.  I’m on the side of _getting shit done_.”

“Which is why we’re going behind everybody’s backs to catch Loki,” said Steve.

“I’m trying to avoid creating a situation in which anybody needs to invoke them,” Nat told him.  “I made Thor promise to at least _try_ to do this without raining down bolts from above, and if we can do that, the Accords will never come up.”

“So Loki can do whatever he wants, but _we_ have to sneak around.”

“Yes,” said Nat curtly.  “That’s how it works for now.  How is your friend?”

She was changing the subject, but Steve was okay with that.  He didn’t want to talk about the Accords, either.  “Bucky… they’re working on it,” he said.

Nat nodded, and offered him a reassuring smile.  “They’ll figure it out,” she said.

“I know they will,” Steve agreed.  He had faith in the Wakanadan scientists, and Princess Shur, who stood a good chance of being the single smartest person Steve had ever met, had taken a personal interest in the case.  He needed _some_ good to have come out of that whole damned mess.

* * *

 They landed at Moss Airport in Rygge in the middle of the next morning – the bigger _Oslo Lufthavn_ was closer to their destination, but would be harder for them to slip through unnoticed.  At security they presented the fake passports Natasha had brought along for them.  These were stamped without any comment, and if Steve looked nervous, he must not have looked nervous _enough_ to cause any suspicion.

With that done, he and Nat collected their luggage – which was minimal, since both of them preferred to travel light – and headed into the arrivals hall.  This looked much like any other airport Steve had ever been to, with beige walls and high ceilings with visible rafters and pipes.  People were milling around, collecting baggage and meeting friends and relatives, talking to each other and on phones in half a dozen languages…

… and there seemed to be an awful lot of people in navy jumpsuits with the word _POLITI_ on the back.

Natasha appeared to notice this at the same time Steve did.  She stopped and looked around in confusion – or did she?  That was the thing about Natasha.  It was so difficult to tell what she was really thinking, and what was just an act.  A terrible suspicion entered Steve’s mind.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Nat.

Steve took her arm and pulled her aside.  There was an area set aside, against the far wall, for oversized luggage – Steve dragged her over there to pretend they were waiting for something.

“What is going on?” he repeated, looking her in the eye.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I just got here, too, remember?”

“Is this a trap?” Steve asked through his teeth.  “Did they send you to Wakanda to trick me into leaving the country so I can be arrested?”  Why hadn’t he thought of that _before_ he got on the plane with her?

“No,” Nat replied, perfectly calm.  “I don’t know why this place is full of cops, but I don’t think it has anything to do with us.  Now stop looming over me, or I’ll scream.”

“You?  Scream?”  For a moment Steve wanted to scoff – Nat never screamed.  Then he had second thoughts.  A woman screaming in this crowded public area would attract immediate attention, and they were surrounded by the police.  If she accused him of threatening her, he would be arrested and fingerprinted, and they would quickly realize who he was.  Natasha may not have _brought_ Steve here to be locked up, but she could make it happen at any moment.

He stepped back.  “All right.”

“Better,” she said.  She rearranged her clothing, and pulled a packet of gum out of her jacket pocket.  “Let’s do what we came here to do.”

Natasha popped a stick of gum in her mouth and softened it, then went up to the nearest airport employee.  “Hey, you speak English?” she asked, chewing the gum loudly.  “What’s up with all the fuzz?”

The woman frowned.  “The… fuzz?”

“The fuzz.”  Nat nodded.  “The five-oh.  The po-po.  They’re everywhere.”  She gestured around.

“Oh.”  Steve couldn’t tell if the employee had actually recognized any of the slang terms, but she seemed to have figured it out.  “There was a bread-in at the museum of Cultural History.  They’re trying to make sure thieves cannot leave the country with any artefacts.”

“Bummer,” said Nat.  “I wanted to see the Viking boat.”

“I’m sure they’ll let us in once they’ve got it figured out,” Steve said, conscious as always of what a terrible actor he was.  Steve could lie, but he couldn’t do it off the cuff the way Nat could.  He needed to prepare and rehearse.  “In the mean time, I guess we’ll have to find something else to do this morning.”

“I guess,” Natasha grumbled.  “Hey, what do you people have for breakfast in Sweden?” she asked the employee.

“This is Norway, honey.”  Steve took her hand.

“Whatever,” she said, and let Steve drag her away.  Once they were out of the airport employee’s hearing, she added, “see?  I told you.  Nothing to do with us, but possibly…”

“… Possibly something to do with Loki,” Steve finished for her.  Asgard had influenced Viking culture long ago – a piece of lost technology from that realm could easily have been mistaken for ancient Scandinavian art.

“Exactly,” Nat nodded.

There was only one problem with that theory – the name of the institution.  “I thought Thor wanted to meet us at the National Gallery, though,” Steve said.  “Isn’t that a different museum?”

“Yes, but it’s just around the block from the Museum of Cultural History,” Nat said.  “Maybe Loki found him first.”

“If that’s true, what are you and I supposed to do about it?” Steve asked.  If Loki had surprised Thor and incapacitated him, then he and Nat, who were not nearly so powerful, were up the creek.

“Wing it,” said Natasha.

They rented a car.  It had been the middle of summer in Wakanda, with the rivers dried up to trickles and the sun beating down.  In Norway it was only thirty degrees out, with a thin but soggy and treacherous layer of snow on the ground.  Driving was slow and slippery on the E6, and the trip took at least twice as long as the fifty-one minutes suggested to them by their GPS.  As they got into the city proper, the roads became drier and the traffic sped up – but within a few blocks of the museum, they began to hear sirens.  The next corner they turned was the last one they were able to.  The road ahead of them was cordoned off by yellow tape.

“That’s promising,” said Steve.

Nat didn’t say anything.  She parked the car, and they both stepped out for a closer look.  There was police tape strung all around the two grand old brick buildings that housed Oslo’s most prestigious museums, and cops were standing guard at all the entrances, communicating by walkie-talkie.  Steve and Natasha exchanged a look, and then began walking around the block.  As long as Loki hadn’t already taken him down, Thor should be waiting for them somewhere around here.  Hopefully he’d taken Natasha’s advice about blending in.

“Would it be suspicious if we started asking people whether they’ve seen our friend?” Steve wanted to know.

“A little, since they’ll wonder why we don’t just phone him,” said Nat.

There was a thought.  “ _Does_ Thor have a phone?”  Steve was pretty sure, now that he thought of it, he’d seen him talking on one before.

“He does, but he only gives the number to people like Dr. Foster and her friends,” Nat said.  “He’s very firm about it not being a _work phone_.”

They continued on their way around the building, until one of the policemen stopped them.  “ _Jeg beklager, du kan ikke komme på denne måten_ ,” the man said.

Steve expected Natasha to resume her obnoxious tourist guise, but instead she replied in fluent Norwegian: “ _Hva skjer? Vi skulle møte en venn her._ ”

“ _Det er en bombetrussel . Vennligst hold deg tilbake,_ ” said the policeman.

Natasha nodded.  “ _Takk skal du ha_ ,” she said, and took Steve’s arm to escort him back across the street.

“What did he say?” Steve asked.  He had a good memory for words and languages, but he’d rarely encountered Norwegian.

“I asked him what was going on, and told him we were supposed to be meeting a friend,” Nat said.  “He said we have to stay away, because there may be a bomb in the building.”

“A robbery yesterday and a bomb today,” Steve observed.  “Either this place just can’t catch a break…”

“Or somebody’s up to something,” Nat said, taking her turn to finish the sentence.  “We have to find Thor.”

They separated to search for them, but before Steve even reached the end of the block, he heard the sound of shattering glass.  He looked up, and then quickly crouched down and covered his head with his hands as the windows on the second floor of the Museum of Cultural History exploded in a shower of glass fragments.  The policemen ducked or ran to get out of the way, and beams of blue light shot out through the space where the panes had been.

That was a very specific shade of blue, one Steve knew all too well.  He caught Nat’s eye – she hadn’t gone far, herself – and saw her nod.  The two of them ran back to the main entrance.

“ _Stoppe_!” one of the cops protested.  “ _Du kan ikke gå inn!_ ”

He tried to intercept them, but Natasha grabbed him by the arm and threw him into a snowbank while Steve kicked open the heavy wooden doors.  An alarm went off, but he ignored it and dashed inside.  There were policemen here, too, but they seemed to consider his appearance a rescue rather than a problem.  As Nat hurried up the steps to join him, men and women were fleeing the building on both sides of her.

“That way!” she said, pointing to a sign reading _ANDRE ETASJE_.

They ran up a staircase, two and three steps at a time, and Steve’s brain churned over possibilities.  What were they going to do when they got there?  If Thor were in the city and _hadn’t_ already fought Loki and lost, he would definitely join them.  If he were there ahead of them, they could work together.  If he wasn’t, then Steve and Nat would have to come up with a way to keep Loki busy until he arrived.  The thing Loki liked to do best, as they’d already discovered, was talk – so they’d have to encourage him to do that.

If Thor didn’t show up at all… Steve had no idea.

On the second floor they arrived in a long gallery full of tall stones with runs and figures carved into them.  Most of these were in cases, behind glass, but two or three had been broken out and moved.  Of these, all but one were now lying on the floor, some of them in pieces.  The tallest was still whole and upright.  It was a long tapering piece of silvery limestone with its sides roughly squared off, like an Egyptian obelisk, with lines of writing carved around the edge of each.  Several pieces of gold decoration, looking like something taken from a Viking shield or sword, had been inserted into some of the runes, and at the very top, where an obelisk might come to a point, this one had a square notch cut into it.

Historians and archaeologists probably had all sorts of theories about the significance of that notch, but Steve didn’t need those.  He recognized the size and shape of it immediately – and if that hadn’t been enough to convince him, there was a man standing in front of the stone.  He was tall and thin, wearing a dark green coat, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail.

“Loki!” Steve barked.

The man turned around, and his green eyes went wide – Loki had probably been expecting Thor to try to stop him, but Steve and Natasha were a surprise.  He stared at them a few moments as if trying to figure out what they were doing there, and Steve knew he had to seize this chance.  There was no sign of Thor, so they had to get Loki talking.

“Loki, whatever you’re trying to do, you don’t want to do it,” said Steve.

“You think you know what I want?” Loki asked.

“What _do_ you want?” Nat said.  “If it’s worship, then the people who made this stuff _did_ worship you.”  She gestured at the fallen stones.  “You want to destroy the evidence of it?”

Loki glanced around like a hunted animal looking for a way out, and then his stance changed.  He drew himself up to his full height and sneered at them.  “I’m not here to destroy anything, I’m here to _rule_.  If I cannot turn this world to my tastes, then I will find another, one with everything I ever wanted, and where my enemies cannot touch me.”  He turned back to the run stone, and began rotating the gold pieces he’d attached to it.  “Then I will no longer be your concern, and you need never trouble about me again.”

“Even if you are not the Avengers’ concern, Loki,” the voice of Thor boomed, “you are my brother – you will always be mine!”

Thor had just walked through the door in the opposite end of the gallery.  He _was_ undercover, as far as it went, wearing blue jeans and a red hoodie over a heather-gray t-shirt, but it didn’t really _help_.  He was still definitely _Thor_ , and nobody who saw him would have failed to recognize that.  Even disguising Mjolnir as an umbrella didn’t help.

“You’re late!” Nat shouted to him.

“This was not my plan,” said Thor.  “I don’t want to fight you, Loki.  I never have.”

“Good,” said Loki.  “Because if you kill me, you’ll never find where I’ve hidden the tesseract.”

“It’s inside the stone,” said Nat.  “Obviously.”

Steve wondered what they were supposed to do now.  Whatever Loki had in mind obviously involved that rune stone, but it was a cultural artifact.  It would be a shame to destroy it.  Would it be worth it to prevent Loki from carrying out whatever his plan was?

Thor clearly thought it was.  He raised his umbrella – a bolt of lightning hit, and it transformed back into a hammer, and his clothes to Asgardian armor.

“Not this time!”  Loki put his hands on the stone.  The runes lit up blue, and the pieces of gold liquified and seemed to crawl into the carvings, where they began to trace out intricate patterns.

Nat darted forward to tackle Loki from behind.  Steve joined her – they each took one of Loki’s arms and tried to drag him backwards, while Thor struck the stone with his hammer.  The stone fragmented, but did not fall apart.  Instead, the pieces of rock seemed to float on the surface of a pillar of blue energy, still showing the shapes of the runes.  The pieces of gold clattered to the floor.

“You rock-headed…” Loki began.

Thor struck the stone again, and this time it flew apart in a shower of shrapnel.  The roof lifted off the exhibit hall, the walls crumbled, and there was a blinding blue flash.  Steve was flung violently backwards and lost consciousness for a moment.  When he came to, the first sound he heard was, inexplicably, people clapping.


	2. Cinematic

Other sensations fought their way in.  For the first split-second it had felt as if Steve were thrown.  Then instead, he was sharply _yanked_ backwards by something tied around his waist.  He flew through the air to slam into a mercifully padded wall, and then dropped bonelessly to a slanted and similarly soft floor, where he lay panting for a moment.

Before he even opened his eyes, Steve could tell that something was terribly wrong.  He’d had far worse impacts than this before.  He’d jumped from moving trains and fallen ten stories to land on the marble floor of the Triskelion lobby – and in each case, he’d been able to hop to his feet almost immediately and continue fighting.  Now, after what couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty feet, his head was spinning and he couldn’t catch his breath.  It felt as if all the life had been drained out of him.

What had Loki done?  And who was _applauding_ it?

When his head stopped spinning, Steve found he was lying face-down on the floor, which was covered with gray padding decorated in rows of black x’s and triangles.  Behind him it curved up into the wall he’d just hit, as if the whole thing were part of a single big cylindrical structure, but instead of going all the way around it stopped about twelve feet up.  Overhead was a warehouse ceiling, all metal girders and banks of brilliant lights.

On Steve’s left was a man he did not know – he was about thirty, with dark skin and short dreadlocks, and wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with the NASA logo on it.  A cord extended from the back of his shirt to a hole in the padded wall, and this was reeling and unreeling as he got to his feet.

On Steve’s _right_ was Natasha, wearing a turquoise blue jumpsuit with a number of embroidered patches sewn on each side of the front zipper.  She was still on her hands and knees, but all her muscles were coiled to react immediately if necessary, and her eyes were darting bak and forth as she looked around.

In _front_ of them, the padded curve ended five or six feet away, and beyond that were two large film cameras aimed at them, more dazzlingly bright lights and silky white photographic reflectors, and a whole row of strangers in street clothes.  All of these were grinning and most of them still clapping, and one of the camera operators was pumping his arm in the air.

The man on Steve’s left grabbed his arm to help him up.  “You okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted.

A man stepped forward out of the little crowd.  He was in his late sixties or early seventies, with dusty-blond hair and a beard going gray, and a deep crease in between his eyebrows.  He was clapping, too, and smiling brightly.

“Much better,” he said in a British accent.  “ _Much_ better!”

“I told you!”  The man in the NASA shirt beamed and clapped Steve on the shoulder.  “The secret is _don’t tense up_.”

The bearded man came up and shook Steve’s hand, then the black man’s, then Natasha’s.  “Wonderful,” he said.  “Now that we’ve got that, we can leave the rest for the stunt people.  Let’s break for lunch.  Maddy!”  He looked over his shoulder at a woman with several tattoos decorating her shaved head.  “Do you have those revisions?”

Maddy held up a manila folder.

“Good.”  The bearded man nodded.  “Let’s look over those, and I’d like to see everybody back in wardrobe by two o’clock.  Now all of you, get out of here.”

The lights started going out, leaving Steve, who’d been looking right into them, seeing spots.  Some of the strangers left the room immediately.  Others began taking equipment apart, and a woman came up to unhook the lines attached to Steve’s, Natasha’s, and the other man’s clothing.  Steve still didn’t feel right.  He was all sweaty and weak.  It was _almost_ like being that asthmatic kid in Brooklyn again, only it _wasn’t_ , because he was still tall, could still breathe deeply, could still tell the difference between red and green.  What was _wrong_ with him?

He looked at Nat.  She looked back, not bothering to hide the fact that she was as confused as he.  That was even worse.  Things were _bad_ when even _Natasha_ didn’t know what was going on.

The man with the beard had walked away now, and multiple conversations had begun.  Counting on those and the sound of moving cameras and lights to cover his words, Steve said, “Natasha?”

“Yeah?” Nat asked.  Her jumpsuit, he noticed, had the name Залётина – _Zalyotina_ – embroidered on the pocket.  Several of the badges also had Russian text on them, around motifs of rockets and space stations.

“What the hell was that?” asked Steve.

There was a brief pause in which Nat looked around again.  “I do not know,” she admitted.

“We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore,” Steve observed.

“We were never in Kansas to begin with,” she replied.

Steve blinked.  “Have you really not seen _The Wizard of Oz_?”  After she’d made _him_ watch all those ridiculous fantasy and sci-fi movies from the eighties?

“Of _course_ I’ve seen _The Wizard of Oz_ ,” said Nat.  “I’m being a jerk about it because you said that before I could think of something more obscure.”

The name _Zalyotina_ had given Steve a moment of doubt whether this woman was indeed Natasha – that comment washed it away.  “Okay,” he said.  “So… we’re on a movie set.”  _That_ much he could tell.  Steve had been on movie sets before.

“I know we’re on a movie set,” said Nat.  “I’m surprised you haven’t started punching everybody in sight yet.”

“I can’t punch anybody right now,” said Steve.  “I feel terrible.  Like I haven’t slept in weeks.”  How long had it been since he’d felt this bad?  Certainly not since he’d awakened in SHIELD’s fake hospital room after seventy years in the ice.  When he’d been injured after the helicarrier crash in Washington that had _hurt_ , but he hadn’t felt _dulled_ like this.

“Good,” said Nat, entirely without sympathy.  “Try to keep a lid on the _punch everybody_ instinct.  These people aren’t a threat to us.”

A hand grabbed Steve’s arm.  A word was also spoken, but Steve didn’t hear what it was, because he drowned it out with his own holler of surprise.  He spun around and dropped into a fighting stance – his reflexes were slower than normal, but it was good to know they still worked.  Nat jumped, as well, but they were not being attacked.  It was just the black man in the NASA shirt, who seemed as startled by Steve’s reaction as Steve had been by his touch.

He held up his hands and took a couple of steps back.  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Steve straightened up again, cautiously.  His heart felt like it was going to pound its way right through his ribs.  He couldn’t remember the last time it had beat like that.  The medics at SHIELD had told him he had the lowest resting heart rate of any human being.  “I’m fine,” he managed.

“Yeah.”  Natasha, too, was taking deep breaths.  “Fine.”

“Great,” said the other man.  “Come on, let’s eat, huh?”

“Eat.”  Steve nodded.  He _was_ hungry, but Steve was always hungry, so it was a sensation he usually just tuned out.  “Good idea.”

Most of the original crowd had left the room by now and new people were arriving, setting up cameras and reflectors where the previous occupants had taken them down.  Among them were three with the same haircuts and clothing as Steve, Nat, and their as-yet-unidentified co-star: a black man with short dreadlocks, wearing a NASA shirt; a woman with a blonde bob, in a blue jumpsuit; and a tall man with brown hair and beard stubble, in a UC Berkeley sweatshirt.  They were waiting for their counterparts to leave the set.

“Sorry,” Steve told them.

Nat took his arm.  “Come on, guys,” she said brightly.  “I’m starved!”

They followed the other man down a short hallway and out a door into blinding sunlight.  Steve’s eyes were as slow to react as the rest of him, but once he could stop squinting he found they were in a parking lot outside a big white building with an arched roof, which looked like it could be an aircraft hangar but instead had the words _Studio 6_ painted on the side in large red letters.  A few palm trees were visible above the roof, growing on the other side of the lot.  Four metal steps led down to the parking lot, where several huge RV trailers were lined up – but rather than returning to those, the cast and crew had gathered around a catering truck that was serving Vietnamese submarine sandwiches.  People were unfolding lawn chairs and passing around sodas and bottled water.  Beyond the parking lot was a highway, with a green sign directing people to a turnoff that led to the Los Angeles city centre.

The tattooed woman named Maddy was handing out packets of pages.  She pulled a set out of her folder and gave them to the man in the NASA shirt.

“Glover,” she said.

“Thank you,” he accepted it, and flipped it open for a look as he went to pick up his sandwich.

“Johansson.”  Maddy gave some pages to Nat.

Nat accepted them without comment.

“Evans.”  The third set was for Steve.

“Thanks,” said Steve.  He looked down at the cover – it bore a scene and revision number, and a line indicating that this copy belonged to somebody named either Chris Evans or Matt Rankin.  When he opened it, he found Rankin’s lines highlighted.  Other characters, including _Zalyotina_ , were participating in a conversation that sounded, what with mentions of oxygen levels and contacting Earth, as if it were happening on a spacecraft.

“Oh, and Donny,” Maddy added, talking to the man in the NASA shirt.  “Your friend at real-life NASA called.  Hyperspace geometry girl.”

Donny immediately lowered his script pages and pulled his phone out of his back pocket.  “You mean Kevin?” he asked.  “Thanks.  I’ll give her a call.”

Although even his _thinking_ felt slow, Steve was now beginning to come up with a theory.  They knew that the tesseract was able to open wormholes, moving objects and people around in space at will.  Whatever Loki had done, it had apparently caused Steve and Natasha to switch places with the actors making this movie – actors who looked creepily just like them, it seemed, since nobody had noticed the substitution.  Thor and Loki were probably around here somewhere, too, just not in the immediate vicinity.  What about the tesseract itself?  Was it here, or still in the museum in Norway?

He looked at Natasha, who was pretending to read her script.  She caught his eye, and nodded.  They had to get out of here and get back to their mission, but they had to do it _carefully_.  If they were on American soil, they could not afford to identify themselves.  That would land them in prison.

“Okay,” Nat announced, “there’s been a big mistake here.”

People looked up at her.  Steve frowned – what was she going to do?  She couldn’t possibly just _tell_ everybody who they really were, could she?

“What kind of mistake?” asked the bearded man.

“This.”  Nat thrust the script in his face.  “This is _not_ Russian.”

“It’s not?”  He frowned.  “We had a guy double-check it…”

“Well, was his name Google Translate?” Nat asked.  “Because I guess yeah, it’s _technically_ Russian, but nobody _talks_ like this!”

The man looked over at Steve, who considered a couple of options and then just shrugged.  Nat knew what she was doing – he would just let her handle it.

“Why didn’t you bring that up at the meeting yesterday?” the bearded man asked her.

“It slipped my mind,” said Nat.  “My shovel wasn’t big enough for all the bullshit.”

“Well, does it really matter?” he tried.  “They’ll dub the movie before showing it in Russia, anyway.”

“What about Russian people living in the US?” Nat asked, arms folded across her chest.  “I guess it’s okay if we sound like idiots to _them_?”

He sighed heavily.  “All right, I’ll find somebody else to look at it.  In the mean time…” he turned to Maddy.  “I guess we need to figure out how we can use this afternoon.  See what the second unit’s up to.  I’ve… I’ve gotta call the producer.”  He started taking back the pages his assistant had handed out, pausing to look Steve over.  “You got any Russian?” he asked.

Steve tried to remember what little he knew.  “ _Pivo, pozhaluysta_ ,” he offered.  That was the first phrase Nat had taught him.  It meant _one beer, please_.

It took a moment, but the man chuckled.  “At least _somebody_ around here has a sense of humour,” he observed, and glanced back at Nat with a sigh.  “Matt Damon said she was a pleasure to work with,” he muttered.

Steve didn’t know who Matt Damon was or why the name made him think of Asgard.  “Well, that’s just his opinion, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yeah.”  The bearded man sighed.  He motioned for Maddy to follow, and they headed back up the steps into the studio building.

Nat took two sandwiches from the catering truck and gave one to Steve.  “I will be in my trailer if anyone needs me,” she declared grandly.

Donny frowned.  “You don’t have a trailer,” he said.  “You go home.”

“Then I’ll be in _his_ trailer,” Nat decided, looping her arm through Steve’s. 

Steve was amused in spite of himself as she dragged him away.  “Well done,” he murmured to her.

“I don’t get to do full-tilt diva very often,” she replied with a smile.  “That’s usually Stark’s job.”

“You just enjoy watching people who hate you have to put up with you anyway,” Steve said.  He’d done some of that during the war, showing up the generals and politicians who hated how this musclebound fool got all the attention.  It _did_ make him feel good.

“Everybody enjoys that,” Nat said.  “It’s the evil queen in all of us.”  She chose one of the RVs at apparent random, and grabbed the door handle.  “This one’s yours.”

“No, it’s not,” said Steve.  The sign on the door bore the same name as had been highlighted on the front of his script: _Chris Evans_.  It was a very nondescript name, Steve thought, like _John Smith_.  Or, for that matter, _Steve Rogers_.

“Considering that Mr. Evans is probably picking himself out of the remains of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo right now, I think he’s got other things to worry about besides who’s in his trailer,” said Nat.  “You can tell him we _borrowed_ it, if that makes you feel better.”

“I’ll do that,” Steve promised.

Natasha opened the door.

The first thing Steve saw was the dog, which had stood up on its hind legs to rest its paws against the inner screen.  When Nat opened that second door to climb the steps and go inside, the dog bounced out past her to greet Steve.  It was a floppy-eared, brown and white animal of indeterminate breed, and like most of its kind it seemed to have recognized Steve immediately as a dog lover.  He knelt down to rubs its head and neck, and the dog wagged its tail and lolled its tongue out happily.

“Hi, there, boy,” said Steve.  He held out a hand for the dog to sniff.  It licked his fingers, and with his other hand, Steve found its collar and tag.  “Dodger,” he read.  “Nice to meet you, Dodger.  Did somebody leave you here all alone?”

“Steve!” Natasha called from inside.  “Come and take a look at this.”

“Coming,” Steve replied.  He straightened up and gave Dodger’s head a few more pats.  If this were Chris Evans’ dog, he thought, somebody was going to have to take care of it until its owner returned.  Evans might be badly injured, or even under arrest.  If he looked so much like Steve that nobody on _this_ end had noticed the two switching places, right now he was probably telling a SWAT team that he wasn’t Captain America.  They weren’t going to believe him.

With Dodger following close behind, hoping for more affection, Steve climbed the two steps into the trailer.  The first room was a kitchen that was practically the size of Steve’s entire apartment in 1940’s Brooklyn, and it was a mess, with dishes in the sink and half a bowl of cereal uneaten on the table.  Script pages were scattered around, and books and magazines on the American space program – but the first thing to really catch Steve’s eye were the photographs taped to the cupboards.  Some of these were of strangers, but many appeared to have Steve himself in them.  If that were Chris Evans then yes, the resemblance was absolutely uncanny.

Some of the pictures were probably of Evans’ family and friends.  Others were perhaps from his movies.  There was a photo of Evans standing next to an astonishingly tall man, perhaps a basketball player, both of them smiling.  Another showed Evans bundled up against winter cold and looking like he’d just been beaten black and blue, but beaming as he posed with a teenage boy and a very schoolmarm-ish looking woman.  There was, of all things, one of those ridiculous Doritos bags Stark had found so funny, framed on the wall as if it were a work of art.

Then Steve’s stomach felt like it tied itself in a knot, as he began finding pictures of people he _knew_.

There was one of himself, Natasha, and Sam in street clothes, grinning and laughing.  Worse, there was one of Steve, Bucky, and Peggy in uniform, leaning on the counter of that café in northern Italy in 1944 – where had some actor gotten _that_?  Another was of Peggy making a face and pointing at a smiling Steve, both of them with twenty-first century clothing and haircuts, and looking directly into the camera.  Yet another was of Steve, Stark, and T’Challa in suits and ties, with their arms around each other’s shoulders like they were all best buddies.  Steve didn’t remember any of those pictures being taken.  Some of them could not _possibly_ have been taken, because the people in them were dead!

“Steve!” Natasha repeated.

“Nat, have you seen this?” Steve asked.  Whatever she was calling him for, it couldn’t possibly be as distressing as what he’d just found.

“Steve,” she insisted, “have _you_ seen _this_?”

When Steve tore his eyes away from the impossible photographs, he found Nat in the living room, at the front of the trailer.  This was built around a fake fireplace that was really just a television screen playing a video of burning logs.  Steve had never understood the point of such a thing, since it didn’t keep anybody warm and couldn’t be cooked on in an emergency, but there it was – and hanging above it were three framed movie posters.

These were done in what Steve recognized as an old-fashioned style by the standards of the 2010s.  Modern posters tended to go in for teal and orange and a lot of photoshop filters.  These were in watercolours, and were for separate but related films: _Captain America: the First Avenger_ ; _Captain America: the Winter Soldier_ ; and _Captain America: Civil War_.  Each bore a list of actors’ names, but the portraits were of people Steve _knew_.  There was himself, Peggy, Bucky, Natasha, Sam, Stark… even Pearce and the Red Skull.

There had been Captain America films, of course.  There were the ones Steve himself had been in, and then there’d been a couple more made by Howard’s Stark Pictures in the late forties and early fifties, with Burt Lancaster and Ronald Reagan.  There’d also been the two terrible made-for-TV movies from the eighties, in which Steve had been played by a guy who looked like his name ought to be Bolt Vanderhuge or something and who was, if possible, a worse actor than Steve himself.

The last few years had produced more Avengers-themed movies, as well.  There’d been that one with Eric Bana as Dr. Banner, and the Battle of New York movie _The Tower_ , which everybody seemed to have hated except for Dr. Foster’s friend Darcy.  The team had watched those, and had a good laugh at them.  These were different.  The faces were too perfect, and the titles suggested events uncomfortably close to the last several years of Steve’s life.  Anybody making movies about that was doing so without his permission.

“Those… aren’t real movies, are they?” asked Steve, taking in the lists of names on each.  He didn’t recognize any of them except for the one from the trailer door: _Chris Evans_ , his doppelgänger.

“They’re not real movies in Kansas,” said Natasha thoughtfully.

Steve turned his head to look at her, and found her in her ‘thinking’ pose, head cocked and brow creased.  After a moment, she caught his eye, and took a deep breath.

“This is going to sound weird,” she warned him.

“Weird?  What’s weird?” asked Steve.  “We were just in Oslo looking for an alien who thinks he’s a god and now we’re making a movie.  I don’t know what weird _is_ anymore.  Tell me.”

She didn’t, though.  Instead she stood there thinking a moment longer, then looked around the room.  “Find me a computer or cell phone,” she said.  “I want to try something.”

They searched the living room, which was tidier than the kitchen but only slightly, with Dodger the dog doing his best to help and mostly getting in the way.  Underneath a pile of magazines Steve found a small laptop.  When he turned it on a password screen popped up, but Nat got them past that easily, and Steve sat down on the ottoman and brought up Google.

“All right, what am I looking for?” he asked.

“ _Museum of cultural history explosion_ ,” Nat said, leaning on his shoulder to watch.

Steve entered the terms, slowly – SHIELD had gotten him lessons in touch-typing, but right now his fingers, like everything else, were clumsier than normal.  The search engine thought for a moment, then presented a list of results.

To Steve’s surprise, none of them were about what had just happened in Oslo.  Never mind that the actual explosion had been less than an hour ago, in this age of instant communication and constant media presence, an event like that ought to be all over the news already.  Instead, the first page of links was mostly articles about the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which was being taken to task for neglecting black history.

“Try _Avengers in Oslo_ ,” Nat suggested.

Steve tried it, and read off the first result that came up.  “ _Oslo – Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki_ ,” he said, and clicked on the link.

The article that came up was in white text on a black background, surrounded by ads, and it was very brief.  The first paragraph discussed the paganist riots, which were something Steve could remember hearing about, although he’d been busy elsewhere at the time.  The second part of the article was about Stark’s visit to the NEXUS, and it quoted a conversation Steve remembered having with Stark, Banner, and Fury about Ultron’s attempts to launch nuclear weapons.  The men’s names were all highlighted in blue – they were links to other pages.  Steve licked his lips, then clicked on his own.

Nat leaned a little further forward, and this time it was she who started reading aloud.  “ _Captain America is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics_ …” she said.

“What?” Steve interrupted.  “Fictional?”

“Scroll down,” said Nat, and when he didn’t, she put a finger on the touchpad and did so herself.  “Here we are!  _In Other Media.  Actor Chris Evans portrays Steve Rogers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Films_ Captain America: the First Avenger, The Avengers… yadda yadda yadda.”  She kept scrolling through a list rather longer than the three movies whose posters were on the wall.

“What?” Steve repeated.  When he’d first awakened back in 2012, he’d learned that a lot of people _did_ assume Captain America was a fictional character – a mascot invented for comics and old films as an embodiment of the optimistic allied war effort.  Five years later, after Steve had been on the news, the Ellen Degeneres show, and that stupid Doritos bag, they ought to know better.  _Wikipedia_ certainly ought to know better.

“I was right,” Nat said, sounding uncharacteristically surprised by it.  “Huh.”

“What were you right about?” Steve asked.  “What’s going on?  Whatever it is, it can’t possibly be any weirder than this is already, so just tell me.”

Nat reached over his shoulder and clicked on one of the movie titles, apparently just out of curiosity.  “Are you familiar with the idea of parallel universes?” she asked.

Steve had heard the phrase.  It was something Stark and Banner occasionally talked about, but he had only a very vague understanding of the concept, garnered mostly from movies and television.  “That’s where there’s an alternate world where things happened differently, and it somehow exists at the same time and place as our world, but we can’t get there.”

“Right,” said Natasha.  “Supposedly there’s an infinite number of them, where all possibilities happen.  There’s a world where we lost in New York and Loki now rules the planet, there’s a world where Ultron destroyed the earth…”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working,” Steve pointed out.  “We’re in another universe?”  Could the tesseract _do_ that?  Well, if this were actually happening, then yes, evidently it could.

“Loki said he would find another world to rule,” said Nat.  She found the _Cast_ section of the article on _The Avengers_ , and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen to start writing down the names.  “I figured he was talking about an alien planet.”

“I didn’t stop to think about it,” said Steve – though if he had, he would probably have come to the same conclusion.  “He went to a universe where we’re fictional, so we can’t stop him from taking over?”  Was that what he’d meant by _where my enemies cannot touch me_?  In that case, though, wouldn’t Loki himself be fiction, too?  How did the people of this world know what to put in their movies, if those events had never happened here?

“Maybe.  Maybe we all ended up here by accident when Thor broke the rune stone,” said Nat.  “So if you and I are in the place of the actors who played us in these movies… although I don’t know why they’d name the movies after _you_ when _I’m_ the one who does all the hard stuff…”

“Thanks, Nat, that means a lot,” said Steve.  He could guess where she’d been going with the first part of that statement, though.  “If we’re here, we can assume that Thor and Loki must be, also, while the Steve and Natasha from _this_ world… I mean…” he looked up at the central poster.  “I mean Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson…”

“They must be in our world,” Nat agreed.

Steve had already figured that, but now he started seriously contemplating what it would actually _mean_.  “Getting arrested for breaking into the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo,” he said.

“And then handed over to the World Security Council for taking on a supervillain without the permission of the Norwegian government, in non-compliance with the Sokovia Accords,” Nat agreed with a grimace.

“All while they insist that they’re _not_ Captain America and the Black Widow, they just play them in the movies!”  Steve groaned.  This was a very bad situation indeed.  “All right, how do we fix it?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha said, “but I know who to ask.”


	3. Escape from Studio Six

Steve could guess what Nat was thinking – the obvious solution to their problem was to do exactly the opposite of whatever Loki had done to get them here.  They had no idea how to do that, but Loki himself would.  That left them right where they’d started this adventure, he thought – they had to find Loki.

“We’ll need the rune stone and the tesseract,” he observed.  “The rune stone will probably still be in the museum, but if the Avengers are just a movie in this universe, then where’s the tesseract?”

“In storage with SHIELD?” Nat suggested with a shrug.  “Maybe on Asgard.  Maybe at the bottom of the ocean.  There’s no way to tell from here.”

None of those were comforting possibilities.  “Then once we have them, we’ll need to figure out how to program the rune stone,” Steve said.  Loki had inserted those gold pieces and manipulated them to get it working.

“Thor might know,” Nat said, “but Loki probably knows better – I don’t think even _he_ is foolish enough to do something like enter another universe without a way to get back if things go wrong, and I’m sure Thor still wants to take him home.  We’ll have to find both of them first, anyway – _then_ we can worry about the tesseract.”

Steve nodded – although he knew it was going to prey on the back of his mind anyway.  “We ended up here because this is where our actors were.  Thor and Loki will have taken the places of theirs, too, but they’re obviously not in the same movie we are.”

“But we do have their names.”  Nat held up the notes she’d made.  “That’s a start.”

“Then let’s not waste any more time.”  Steve closed the laptop and stood up.

Just then, Dodger began to bark, and a moment later, somebody knocked on the trailer door.  Steve and Nat exchanged a glance and then, because neither had a better idea, Steve went and answered it.

The caller was a tall, thin man with a mustache, who immediately leaned down to rub Dodger’s ears.  “Hey, Dodger,” he said with a smile, then straightened up to talk to Steve.  “Thought I’d let you know: it’s almost two.  Ridley needs you guys back in makeup.”

“Oh.  Yeah,” said Steve.  “Tell him we’ll be right there.”

He shut the door again and went to the closet to grab a few things – for all they knew, he and Nat might have a very long trip ahead of them.  When he happened to look out the bedroom window, however, he saw that the stranger had not left.  He was still standing just outside the door, waiting for them.  The only other doors were in the cab of the RV, but that faced the studio building, and people would see.  The windows didn’t open far enough for Steve to climb out.  For a moment he considered just knocking the guy out and fleeing, but as Natasha had said, these people had done nothing wrong.  They were just trying to make a movie, and had no idea that their stars had been replaced…

… and, Steve realized, he _still_ couldn’t tell them.  In their own universe, Steve and Natasha would have been arrested if they’d told anybody their real names.  In this one, they would probably be considered insane.

“You got any ideas?” he asked Nat.

“Bide our time and wait for an opportunity,” she replied.  “When we get a chance to leave without having to make a big production out of it, we’ll leave.”

“So we just turn up?  And do what?” asked Steve.  “We don’t even know what movie we’re making!”

“It’s called _Breathless_ ,” Nat replied at once.  “Ridley Scott is directing.  It’s loosely based on an incident on the Space Station _Mir_ in 1997, when there was a fire and explosion.”

“How did you know that?” asked Steve.

“I read the script pages they gave me,” she said.

Of course she had.  Nat never missed an opportunity to learn something.  “You’re taking this very well,” Steve observed.

“Believe it or not, this isn’t my first alternate universe,” Nat told him.  “Last time, though, we had an open portal home whenever we needed it.”

“You’ll have to tell me that story someday,” Steve said.

“It’s really not as cool as you’re thinking.”

The man with the mustache, who said his name was Henry, led them into another trailer parked just outside the studio building.  This one was much more utilitarian, boxy and windowless with plain white siding, and inside was a row of mirrors and makeup tables separated by cubicle partitions.  Henry got Steve and Natasha settled at two of these, and the woman named Maddy returned and passed out cups of coffee.

“Okay,” she said, handing one to Steve, “since the Russian doesn’t meet ScarJo’s high standards, we’re gonna grab some extra close-ups.  Chris, we’ll get you into a pre-fire EVA helmet on greenscreen two, for the first cargo bay sequence.”  She gave him a couple of pages, and then moved on.  “Scarlett, you’ll be in a post-fire B jumpsuit for Olga’s call for help.  Tabitha!” she called out.

“Already on it!” a voice replied from just outside.

Henry got to work, wiping old makeup off Steve’s face and dabbing a new layer on.  Meanwhile, a woman with dark hair in a pixie cut, who turned out to be the previously unseen Tabitha, brought in the costumes.  Steve was a big cumbersome thing that he recognized as the upper half of a spacesuit.  She left it sitting on top of a big Rubbermaid container and moved on to the rest of the cast.

Steve looked down at the pages he’d been given.  These ones had bent corners and multiple corrections in blue pen, as if they’d been used before.  His eye caught the highlighted words _Rankin gazes in awe at the blue vista below_ , and he felt his stomach turn inside-out all over again.

This was no good.  Steve could do a lot of things, but _acting_ wasn’t one of them.  He couldn’t even tell little white lies unless he rehearsed them in the mirror first, much less simulate gazing in awe at anything.  If he couldn’t make _I don’t know_ sound convincing, what the hell was he supposed to do with _I can see everybody’s house from up here_?

Maddy came to look over Steve’s shoulder while Henry worked on his face.  “Any questions?” she asked.

The first one that sprang to mind was _can I go home?_ , but Steve suspected he already knew what the answer would be.  “Where’s Dodger?” he asked.  Who looked after the dog while the owner was filming?

“Relax,” Henry assured him.  “Paulette will take him for his walk, on schedule.”

Through the partition, Steve could hear Natasha laughing at something.  “Oh, that sounds exactly like Mark!” she said delightedly.

Steve wondered who Mark was.  Then he wondered if Natasha knew.

The makeup took an _awfully_ long time.  Steve had seen both Natasha and Peggy do their faces up inside of ten minutes and come out looking fabulous, but this took nearly forty-five, and as far as Steve could tell from his reflection he looked no different at the end of it than he had at the beginning.  That done, Tabitha and Henry helped Steve into his half-a-spacesuit, which weighed far more than it looked like, and led him back into the studio building.

At least the long process had given him time to look at the lines he was expected to see.  It seemed all that was happening in the scene was Mission Specialist Matthew Rankin looking at the Earth and talking about how cool it was.  Steve was starting to tell himself that he could do that.  When he’d done the Captain America movies in the 1940’s, he’d been playing _himself_ – he hadn’t been very _good_ at it, but when filming a scene he’d been able to look back at real events that were similar, and try to imitate what he’d said or felt at the time.  This couldn’t be that much different.  He’d never actually seen the Earth from space, of course, but he could remember the awe of watching the Chi’Tauri vessels come through the wormhole… if he could just get himself back into that headspace, it ought to work.

Henry and Tabitha showed him into a room where there was a green wall, and positioned him in front of it.  A camera rig rolled right up to his face, making him lean away involuntarily.

“Okay,” said a woman standing next to the camera.  “Let’s start with the wordless ones.  Awe at the blue vista, please.”

Steve’s fragile confidence collapsed like a house of cards as he looked around the mostly empty soundstage.  “Where is it?” he asked.

“Where’s what?”

“The blue vista,” he clarified.  “What am I supposed to look at?”

“Same as last time,” she said, as if this were supposed to be reassuring.  “Right there.”

She pointed at the ceiling.  There was another green panel up there.

Steve was starting to panic again.  How was he supposed to express awe at the blue vista when all he could _see_ was a green panel?  “It’s not even blue!” he protested.

“You’re an actor,” the woman replied.  “Use your imagination.  Lights!”

The ambient lighting in the room went out, and a big cluster of blue-white bulbs came on overhead.  In the heavy spacesuit costume, Steve immediately felt like he was overheating.

He tried, though.  He shut his eyes and did his best to remember the wormhole and the leviathans and the fear and astonishment that had gone with that.  He thought about the opening sequence from the _Planet Earth_ documentary series, which he’d binged on Netflix one night when he couldn’t sleep, and definitely featured an awe-inspiring blue vista rolling by.  He could _sort_ of see himself as an astronaut.  Before he could really get into it, though, the camera moved even _closer_ , and he couldn’t stop himself from looking directly into the lens.

“Cut!” the woman said.  “Try it again.”

It was no good, though.  The camera was _right there_.  He couldn’t _not_ look at it – if he tried, he became paranoid that it would run right over him.  If he shut his eyes, the second-unit director ordered him to open them.  And hanging over all of it was the inescapable knowledge that he was being _watched_.  That was what Steve had always hated most about the War Bonds ads, or any television appearance, the constant presence of that staring audience.  He’d had to take Peggy’s advice and pretend there was a one-way mirror in between them.  The whole thing just made him feel so _silly_ , especially when he didn’t even have any lines to say.  He was just supposed to stand there and gape like an idiot, while being filmed.

Eventually the second-unit director – her name was Brenda – got fed up and decided to try something else.  One of the grips read out what was supposed to be dialogue from mission control, while Steve replied.

“How’s the view Rankin?” the scrip-reader asked.

Steve took a deep breath.  “Spectacular.  I can see my house from up here.”

“Can you really?”

“I can see _everybody’s_ house from up here.”

“Cut,” sighed Brenda.  “Try it again.  A little _passion_ , Chris?  This isn’t Captain America’s Fitness Challenge.”

Steve wanted to retract his head into the spacesuit costume like a turtle into its shell.  Why couldn’t he have landed in an alternate universe where people _didn’t_ remember Captain America’s Fitness Challenge?

At last the second-unit director gave up in disgust and told everybody to take a break.  Henry and Tabitha helped Steve out of the heavy spacesuit costume and gave him a bottle of water to re-hydrate after standing under the hot studio lights.  As he stood there chugging it twitching uncomfortably in a shirt practically pasted to him by sweat, Ridley Scott entered the room.

“How’s it going?” the director asked.

“We’re having an Off Day,” Brenda replied, looking at Steve out of the sides of her eyes.

Steve swallowed his water and tried desperately to think of something to say.  “I’m… just not feeling it,” he tried.  “I need to go look at some space pictures or something.”  Evans had those in his trailer.  Was that what he used them for?  Inspiration?

“Apparently we used up all our _good_ work in that stunt this morning,” Scott grumbled.  “Scarlett’s suddenly having trouble deciding what a Russian accent sounds like.”

From out in the hall came Natasha’s voice.  “Russia has the surface area of the moon,” she said.  “If you want a ‘Russian Accent’ you need to be more specific!”

Steve held out the empty water bottle.  “Can I get another one of these?” he asked hopefully.

There was a cooler in the makeup trailer with water and sodas in it.  Steve dug a second bottle out of the ice and downed it, while Nat lounged in one of the chairs examining her fingernails.  She seemed to be having a great time playing the spoiled starlet.

“How’d you do?” she asked with a smirk.

“I don’t think I’m speaking to you,” said Steve.  He mopped his forehead with the edge of his t-shirt, trying to find a place that wasn’t already damp.  “I don’t think I need to, anyway, you were probably watching the whole thing.”

“Actually, no,” said Nat, “but I’m hoping they’ll let us watch the dailies!  Anyway.”  She sat up and held out her phone.  “I didn’t learn anything about the tesseract, but that’s not surprising.  I did manage to learn, however, that Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, is currently on sabbatical with his family in Australia.”  The picture she’d found was of a smiling man in a jacket and tie, with short blond hair and beard stubble.  He did kind of look like Thor, although it was strange to see him with his hair cut.

“I thought _I_ was Chris,” said Steve.

“Apparently there’s a lot of Chris around here,” Nat replied.

“Any sign of a chance to escape yet?” Steve asked.  It couldn’t come fast enough.

“A little more ‘acting’ from you ought to do the trick.  Sooner or later they’ll just give up.”

“I’m glad I’m good for something.”

There was a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer, another studio employee entered the makeup trailer.  This was a thin young woman with long, limp blonde hair under a pink knitted hat.  “Excuse me, Scarlett?” she said to Nat.  “Your husband’s here.”

Steve looked at Natasha, wondering how she would react.  She’d always avoided getting into long-term relationships, partly because of her work and partly because she couldn’t have children – the reason she’d thought things might work with Banner was because neither factor would be an issue.  Would she, too, be shocked to learn she had a _husband_ in this universe?

Of course she wasn’t.  Natasha didn’t do shock.  She just sat up and stretched.  “Be right there,” she promised, as she got to her feet.

Steve followed her to the door so he could watch.  He had to see this.

The man waiting outside was in his late thirties, with short dark hair and brown eyes in a rugged, if not exactly handsome, face.  He was wearing a collarless white shirt and had a black blazer draped over his arm.  Nat hurried up to greet him, and he smiled at her.

“Hi, honey,” she said.

“Hello, Scar,” the man replied.  He put out his free arm, and Nat stood on her toes to give him a quick kiss.  Other people turned their heads to give the couple some privacy – public displays of affection _did_ make people uncomfortable, after all – but Steve couldn’t look away even though he knew it was rude.  Surely, this woman’s only _husband_ would be able to tell something was wrong.

“How’s filming?” the man asked.

“Chris is having an off day,” Nat told him, shaking her head as if fondly exasperated with a long-running problem.  The man looked up sharply, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Steve.  Steve offered a raised hand and what he hoped was a friendly smile, but the man looked away again immediately.

“Bad news,” he said to Natasha.  “It looks like I have to leave for Philadelphia tonight instead of tomorrow.  Don’t worry, I found somebody to watch Mari.  I didn’t want you to come home for the evening and find her with a stranger.”

A lot of people wouldn’t have noticed the beat Natasha missed, but Steve did.  There was a tiny pause, and then she nodded.  “Thanks for letting me know.  Who’d you get?”

“The laundry lady’s daughter, Danielle,” he replied.  “She’s sixteen, and Alice promised me she’s very responsible looking after her own siblings.”

“All right.  Have a good trip.”  Nat kissed the man on the cheek again.

“I’ll call you when my flight gets in,” he replied.  “Love you.”  The man straightened up and fixed Steve with a glare that seemed to say _I’m watching you_ , then turned to go back to his car as if nothing had happened.

“Love you, too!” Nat called after him.

Steve moved out of the way to let her climb the stairs to the makeup trailer again.  She fished one of the water bottles out of the cooler and sat back down in her chair.  Her hands were shaking, ever so slightly, as she unscrewed the cap.  The performance must’ve been stressful for her.

There were several things Steve could have said at that moment.  The most obvious would be to make some kind of comment on the fact that the husband seemed jealous of, or at the very least _concerned_ about, Steve.  If he brought that up, however, Nat would probably mention that apparently half the people in their _own_ universe thought the two of them were sleeping together.  Dr. Foster’s friend Darcy had told them all about it, with an enthusiasm that had been slightly terrifying.

So instead, he said the _second_ thing that came to mind, which was to ask, “who’s Mari?”

“I don’t know.”  Nat shrugged.  “Maybe the kid.  Maybe the dog.”

“I thought you’d met Mari, Chris,” said Tabitha, passing them on her way to the door.

“Oh, I probably have,” Steve said, then repeated the words to himself and wondered if he were a worse actor with a script or when he was extemporizing.

“I told you he was having an off day,” said Nat.

A few minutes later, as Henry worked on getting the makeup _off_ Steve’s face again, Ridley Scott himself entered the trailer with a resigned expression on his face.

“All right, Scarlett,” he said.  “I found a professor of Balto-Slavic languages at UCLA who went through the script for me, and _he_ says we have to re-write _all_ the Russian and has volunteered to do so on his own time to reflect the various characters’ regional origins as suggested by their names.  It seems to be something he’s passionate about.”

“I’ll have to send him a gift basket,” said Nat.

“Also,” Scott went on, “we’re now having electrical problems on soundstages two and four, and nobody can figure out where the wiring actually connects.”  He held up his hands.  “I know when I’m beaten, so let’s all just get a good night’s sleep and we’ll start again tomorrow morning, when hopefully we’ve all worked some things out of our systems.”

“You’re giving us the evening off?” asked Henry eagerly.

“Yes,” said Scott.  “All of you, get out of here.”  He turned to leave again.  “Maddy!  Where are you?”

“Right here, Mr. Scott!” her voice replied from somewhere outside.

“Good.  I need a massage and a Kahlua.”

Henry resumed scrubbing at Steve’s face, with extra vigor now.  “If I’m fast, I’ll have time to pick my boyfriend up from work!” he explained.  “I can surprise him!”

“Really?”  Steve saw an opportunity.  “In that case, just go – I want a shower anyway.”

Henry was delighted.  “Thanks, Chris!  I really appreciate it!”  He put down the cloth he’d been using and started collecting his things.  “You’re an amazing guy.  Don’t let today get to you, none of us can give a hundred percent _all_ the time.  See you tomorrow!  See you, Scarlett!”

“Bye, Henry,” said Nat, and smiled as the makeup artist ran for his car.  “How can you be _that_ much of a sucker for romance and still not catch any of the women I throw at you?”

“Excuse me, I did that so I won’t find him standing outside my door again tonight.”  Steve pulled off the towel Henry had wound around his neck and got up.

“Keep telling yourself that,” said Nat.  “I want a shower, too.  Meet you in twenty?”

“Twenty,” Steve agreed.

After standing under the blazing studio lights all afternoon, a cold shower was exactly what Steve needed.  As before, Dodger greeted him at the trailer door, and Steve gave the dog a moment of affection before stepping inside and almost literally peeling his t-shirt off.  He walked into the bathroom with it still in his hand, and then stopped short when he saw his reflection.  Steve had changed his shirt once before that day, or at least had it changed _for_ him by Tabitha the costume mistress – and he must have been too distracted and nervous to notice that he had _tattoos_.

There were three lines of text on the upper left of his chest, and on the right side of his abdomen the words _in loving memory of Bardsley with me always_.  On his right shoulder was the word _loyalty_ above a Chinese pictogram, and on the left a bull’s head.  Steve grabbed the shaving mirror and turned his back to the sink so he could check if there were any more on his back.  There didn’t appear to be.  When he got dressed again he would have to make sure he kept those covered, or Natasha would never stop teasing him about it.

No wonder he felt so oddly _dull_.  This wasn’t even his body.  Chris Evans was a great big physically fit man, but he’d never had any super-serum.  When Steve felt weak and trembly, or like he couldn’t quite breathe or hear as well as he ought to, that was the lack of it.

That was also why the shower, while it felt good, was still not quite as good as Steve had hoped.  The serum had overclocked _all_ his senses, including touch – he remembered coming out of the chamber and flinching when Erskine and Howard touched him, their fingers almost painful on his bare skin.  He’d gotten used to it, but returning to what he supposed must be _normal_ felt like he was wearing an extra layer he could not shed.

After his shower, he made sure the sleeves on his shirt were long enough to cover all the body art, and headed outside.  Dodger trotted behind him, hoping for some playtime.  Steve was on his way back to the makeup trailer to meet up with Nat when he encountered the other man who’d done the stunt with them that morning – the one named Glover.

“Hey, Chris,” said Glover.  He was now dressed in a white polo shirt and a beige jacket, eager to take advantage of their night off.  “You headed into town?”

Steve looked down at the dog following him.  “Just taking Dodger for some fresh air.”

“Me and some of the crew were going to the Spare Room,” Glover said.  “You want to come?”

Steve was trying to think of an excuse to refuse when a bright pink convertible rolled up behind him.  Natasha was in the driver’s seat.

“Get in, loser,” she ordered.  “We’re going to Malibu.”

Steve looked back at Glover.  “Apparently I have other plans,” he said.

Glover grinned.  “See you later, Chris.”

“See you later, uh…” Steve swallowed.  He had no idea what this man’s first name was.  “Mr. Glover?”

“Donny,” said the other, his smile turning into a concerned frown.

“See you later, Donny,” said Steve.

Nat reached over to open the passenger-side door for Steve.  Dodger bounced in ahead of him, tail wagging in excitement at the prospect of a car ride.  Steve climbed in.

“Why are we going to Malibu?” he asked, as Nat pulled away.

“Because according to her driver’s license, Scarlett Johansson lives there,” said Nat.  “We need to get in touch with Thor, and if we do it in your trailer we’re more likely to be interrupted and might be questioned when we try to leave.  At Johansson’s place, the only person we need to worry about is Danielle the babysitter, since her husband told us himself that he’s going to Philadelphia.  As an added bonus,” she went on, “we won’t have to awkwardly lie to any Apple Store employees.”

“Let it go,” said Steve.

“No.”  She handed him a pair of sunglasses.  “These are yours.  I got them from your makeup table.”

Steve put them on.  “You know,” he observed, “us going back to your place together isn’t going to help your husband’s opinion of me.”

“What he thinks of you, or of his wife, is not our problem,” said Nat.  “Our problem is finding Loki and Thor and getting back to our own universe.”

That was true, but Steve didn’t like being glared at by jealous husbands.  It had happened before, and it was always a little insulting – Steve wasn’t the type who messed around with married women.  He’d once asked Howard why everybody assumed he did, and the only reply he’d gotten was “have you _seen_ yourself?”, as if being tall and muscular automatically stripped him of any principles.

Of course, the person Johansson’s husband – Steve hadn’t caught his name – was suspicious of was not actually Steve.  It was this actor, Chris Evans.  Steve wondered if _he_ were that type.  He hoped not.  An actor who played Captain America ought to have a little more integrity.  The role wasn’t just a character, it represented a certain set of ideals… or did it?  Maybe that was just how _Steve_ saw it.

It was a troubling thought in another way, too – as he’d realized when he’d seen the tattoos, Steve hadn’t switched places with this actor in body, only in mind.  The idea that he might be occupying a body that had slept with Natasha was weird, to say the least.

That train of thought also reminded him of something.  “I’m just curious,” he said to Nat.  “Did you look for your scar?”

“Yes, I did,” she replied.  “I also googled Chris Evans, so I know what he looks like with no shirt on.  The _loyalty_ one is my favourite.”

Steve groaned.

They left the city and headed west on the Pacific Coast Highway, into the setting sun.  Under more normal circumstances, Steve could have enjoyed the drive – it was a nice evening, with the sunset glittering on the water and a refreshing sea breeze in their faces.  Dodger leaned out the back passenger side with his tongue lolling out, and Steve would have sworn the dog had a smile on his face.

Steve’s brain, however, just wouldn’t stop churning out awful possibilities.  What if the tesseract in this universe was locked up on Asgard, where they couldn’t get at it?  What if the rune stone was still lying buried somewhere instead of in the museum, maybe under a building or at the bottom of the ocean?  What if something happened to Loki or Thor before they could all find each other?  If they, too, had switched bodies with their actors, they would no longer have their Asgardian invulnerability.  They could get hurt or killed as easily as any human.

Then there was the question of what was going on back in the universe they’d _left_.  What if something happened there?  Stark was obsessed with the idea that the Chi’Tauri would come back for the Infinity Stones, and Thor had seemed to agree with him.  What if _that_ came true while three Avengers were in no position to deal with it?  What if some other disaster or supervillain or conspiracy popped up, and people expected Captain America to be there?  What if the Wakandan scientists managed to cure Bucky, and Steve was not there?

Nat might not know what Steve was thinking about, but she could read his face like a book, and she reached over to squeeze his arm.  “Don’t worry, Rogers.  We’re good at getting ourselves out of messes.”

“We’re also good at getting deeper into them,” said Steve.

“Well, nobody wants to kill us here, at least,” said Nat.  “As long as we don’t give them a reason to, we ought to be fine.”

“Given our record, is that really supposed to reassure me?”

She just laughed.


	4. Fox in Socks

Steve had been to Malibu once or twice, to visit Stark at home there, but Stark’s house was way out on the point and it hadn’t been necessary to pass through the city on the way.  Now, on their way to Scarlett Johansson’s house, they went straight through the middle of it, and the houses were positively ridiculous.  Every architectural style Steve knew of was represented, sometimes in the same building, and all on an absurdly grand scale.  There was nothing remotely like it in New York City, where living space was at a premium.  Malibu, with its huge lawns and backyard pools, was sprawl for the sake of sprawl, and it felt almost like an _insult_ to somebody raised in the tight quarters of Brooklyn.

The soft voice of the GPS gave them directions, and Natasha followed them right up a long, curving driveway to a two-storey mansion.  The house was all fake stonework and huge windows, with palm trees inside and out.  It looked horrifyingly expensive and utterly tasteless – just right for some prima donna actress.

Dodger was the first out of the car, and ran to start checking out the trees and pick the ones he wanted to keep.  Steve was second, followed by Nat, once she found her keys.  There were quite a few of them on a keychain with a giant pink pom-pom, and she was about to start trying them in the front door when there was a click, and it opened from the inside.

The face that peered out belonged to a thin teenage girl with long, straight black hair.  She was wearing short denim overalls over a _Guess_ t-shirt, and her expression was wary.  A moment later, however, she realized who had knocked, and her eyes went wide with delight.

“Ms. Johansson!” she said.  “Hi!  It’s so cool to finally meet you!  Is everything okay?  Your husband said you weren’t going to be back until late.”

Natasha smiled back.  “You must be Danielle,” she said.  “Your mother has nothing but good things to say about you.  Ridley gave us the evening off, so you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.  Where’s Mari?”

“She’s napping upstairs,” Danielle replied, then looked up at Steve with some evident concern.  “Oh.  Hello.”

Steve noted that Chris Evans evidently wasn’t as _cool_ as Scarlett Johansson.  “Hi, Danielle.”

“Hello, Mr. Evans,” said Danielle uneasily.  “Uh… Mom told me you weren’t gonna be allowed here anymore.”

“It’s my house,” said Nat firmly.  “I can have what company I like.  You can go, Danielle.”  She reached into her purse and handed the babysitter an impressive-looking wad of cash without even really looking at it.  “And Chris,” she added, flashing Steve a smile as she headed inside, “Make yourself at home.  Grab a snack, fire up Netflix or something.  I’ll be back as soon as I’ve changed.”  She passed Danielle, and vanished up the stairs.

Steve waited by the door while Danielle grabbed her stuff to leave.  She kept giving him sideways looks, obviously quite unnerved by his presence, and Steve felt more and more skeptical about the wisdom of this whole plan.

“Who told your Mom I wasn’t allowed?” he asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

“Mr. Darville,” Danielle replied.  “I won’t tell him,” she added quickly.

“Thanks,” Steve replied.  He assumed Darville must be Johansson’s husband, and wondered whether the man didn’t have some other way to find out who’d been there.  He and Nat had to get back to their own universe, but ruining somebody’s marriage needn’t be a part of the process.

After shutting the door behind Danielle and turning the lock, Steve looked around the house, hoping to find a computer.  The interior was open-concept, with hardwood floors and areas delineated by furniture rather than rooms divided by walls.  There were multiple televisions, one of which took up nearly a whole wall.  Modern art hung here and there between the windows, and there were potted trees everywhere and a cage with a big, colourful parrot sleeping in it.  The powder room was the size of Steve’s trailer at the film lot.  It wasn’t _quite_ extravagant enough to look like somewhere Tony Stark would live, but it was close.

The kitchen was decorated in white wood and glass cupboards, with green granite countertops and a big set of patio doors.  Steve found a laptop on the counter and turned it on, and while it booted up he took a look at some of the pictures – because like her co-star, Scarlett Johansson had photographs of her family and friends in her kitchen.  There was one of he actress and her husband on their wedding day – Natasha getting married, now there was something Steve never thought he’d see.  Other pictures showed her with strangers, though there was one with a man who looked like Stark’s security chief.

Pride of place, however, went to the pictures of a smiling blonde girl, ranging from pictures of her as a small baby to a child of two or three.  That must be Mari.  There were probably more like this upstairs, Steve thought… what did Nat think of them?  Steve knew she loved children.  Was this a life she wished she could have had?

Come to think of it, Nat was taking an awfully long time upstairs.  Steve had seen Natasha make herself unrecognizable in under three minutes.  She couldn’t need twenty to change her clothes.

Steve headed cautiously upstairs to see.  After looking at the pictures, he was half-afraid he’d find Nat weeping over a photo album – but he hoped he didn’t, because he’d never seen her actually cry and wouldn’t have known what to do about it.  As he climbed the steps, however, he heard not sobs, but giggles.

Halfway down the hall was a bedroom done up fit for a princess, with polka-dot walls and an alcove bed with a ruffled canopy.  Natasha was sitting on the bed, still wearing the distressed jeans and sea-green t-shirt she’d come home in.  The little blonde girl from the photos was sitting next to her, listening to Nat read aloud from Dr. Seuss.

“Ready?” asked Nat.

“Yeah!” said the girl.

Nat took a deep breath.  “ _When the beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles, and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… they call this a muddle-puddle-tweetle-poodle-beetle-noodle-bottle-paddle-battle!_ ”

The child squealed in delight and clapped her hands, then looked up and saw Steve peeking through the door.  “Uncle Chris!” she exclaimed, and bounced up from the bed to run and greet her.

Steve knew exactly what to do _there_.  He bent down to hug the girl, and ruffled her hair.  “How are you doing, Mari?” he asked.

“Good!”  Mari giggled.  “You smell like makeup!”

“We’ve been filming all day,” Nat told her.  “That’s why.”

Mari ran back to the bed to grab the book, then returned to Steve with it.  “Now _you_ have to read it,” she informed him, thrusting it in his direction.

“Oh, I don’t know.”  Steve held up his hands.  “I don’t think I could say that whole noodle-poodle-beetle thing.”

“Sure you can!” Mari insisted.

“Give it a try,” said Nat.  “The worst that can happen is you’ll fail horribly and get laughed at by a three-year-old.”

Mari smiled impishly.

“Actually,” Steve said, “I need to have a word with your Mom for a moment, if that’s okay.”

Okay,” Mari decided, “but you have to read the story after.”

“Got it,” said Steve.

“Promise!” Mari ordered.

“Promise.  Cross my heart,” said Steve.  He drew an ‘x’ on the left side of his chest with one finger.

“We’ll be right back, sweetheart,” Nat promised.

She followed Steve out into the hallway and shut the door of Mari’s room, then leaned against it with a sigh.  “I know what you’re going to say,” she said.  “She was already awake when I came upstairs, and she heard me.  I wasn’t about to tell her that I’m not her mother, and she wanted me to read her a story.”

That sounded reasonable enough, and yet Steve was unable to help a horrible suspicion.  “You said we were coming here because there’d be more privacy,” he reminded her.

“Don’t get paranoid on me, Rogers.”  Nat held up a finger.  “All I did was look into the room.  I told you, she was already awake.”

Steve folded his arms across his chest.

Nat sighed.  “I just wanted to _see_ her,” she said, and her voice was unexpectedly pleading.  “Just a look, okay?”

“This was a terrible idea,” said Steve.

“Hey!” Nat protested.  “Don’t you start!  After all the time _you’ve_ spend brooding and angsting over the life opportunities _you_ missed, you’re not allowed to say a thing!  What’s gonna happen if you meet Barnes here?  Are you just _not_ going to want to talk to him?”

Steve’s jaw tightened, and he had to take a deep breath and let it out again before he was able to reply.  When he looked Natasha in the eye, she didn’t even seem sorry.  Of course she wasn’t.  She was very well aware of the cruel blow she’d just landed, and it had been entirely intentional.

“That is different,” he said.

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is!” Steve insisted.  “Because if that happened I would _know_ it’s not actually Bucky, it’s just some actor who plays him.  Him and this Evans guy probably aren’t even friends!”  That was something that hadn’t really sunk in until that moment, even after Steve had seen the face on the poster – somewhere in this universe would be the actor who’d played Bucky, somebody who looked exactly like Steve’s old friend but might have a totally different personality.  _Would_ he want to talk to such a man?  Part of Steve was eager to do so, but it was already at war with the part that was horrified by the entire idea.  “Anyway, that girl is not your daughter, and it’s not fair to her to pretend.”

“So what am I supposed to do, just _tell_ her that?” asked Nat.  “She’d never trust a grownup again, let alone her mother.  All I did was read her a story when she asked me to.  I couldn’t just push her away.”

The worst part was, she was _right_.  Now that they were here and Mari had seen them, they had no choice but to keep up the pretense.  “We need to get home,” Steve said.

“I know.”

“We’re not going to stay the night here,” he said firmly.  “We need to get in touch with Thor and Loki, call the babysitter back, and _go_.”

“I know!” Nat repeated.  “Did you find a computer?”

“In the kitchen,” Steve said.

“Then I’ll go do that,” Nat told him, “and you can read Mari the book.”  Her lips curved into a mischievous smile again.  “You did cross your heart, remember?”

“Yes, I did,” sighed Steve.  “Okay.”

Natasha went downstairs to look for Thor and Loki’s contact information, while Steve went back into Mari’s room and sat down in the pink papasan chair to read the book of tongue-twisters to her.  Mari herself said cross-legged at his feet, gazing up at him adoringly, but Steve was having trouble with it.  His mouth was as clumsy as his fingers, and he kept stumbling over the words.

“Uncle Chris?”  Mari reached up to tug on his hand.

“Huh?”  Steve blinked, and realized he’d stopped reading.  “Sorry.  I was thinking about something.”

“What were you thinking about?” Mari asked.  “Was it Captain America stuff?”

“Yeah, Captain America stuff,” said Steve.  He looked at the page.  “Where were we?  Okay.  _Here’s a new trick, Mr. Knox: socks on chicks and fix on…_ sorry, _and chicks on fox_.”

He’d been thinking about Natasha, and had realized with a chill that this universe would suit her nicely.  She was an excellent actress – at times she could fool even her own close friends, as when she’d convinced Steve she was grieving for Fury’s death while she’d known he was very much alive.  She could win Oscars if she wanted.  She loved children, too.  Clint’s kids adored her, and Mari had clearly enjoyed her company.  The opportunity to be a mother was perhaps the thing she most resented the Red Room taking from her.  Was it just possible she would want to…

 _No_ , Steve told himself, she would _not_.  Nat wasn’t always a paragon of virtue by any measure, but she wouldn’t steal somebody else’s life and leave this poor actress stranded in _their_ dangerous world.  Besides, Nat and Steve shared a sense of responsibility for that world.  She cared too much about the red in her ledger to run off and live out a fantasy.

“ _Fox in socks, our game is done, Sir_ ,” he read.  “ _I hope you had a lot of fun, Sir_.”  Steve closed the book and looked at Mari.  “How’d I do?”

She cocked her head to one side, thinking – a posture so typical of Natasha that it almost made Steve jump.  “Could use some work,” she decided.

“I figured.”  Steve gave the book back to her.  “Do you think you can play quietly up here for a while?  Your Mom and I have more stuff to do.”

Mari was agreeable to that, so Steve left her playing with some plastic ponies and returned to the kitchen.  There he found Nat, sitting on a bar stool with the laptop on the counter in front of her.  She was feeding cold cuts to Dodger with one hand, while typing with the other.

She noticed Steve as soon as he appeared in the doorway, and turned to look at him.  “Is she okay?”

Was she worried Steve might have told Mari the truth?  “She’s fine,” he said.  “Did you find them?”

“I found her Skype contacts,” Nat replied, and pointed at the screen.  “Loki doesn’t answer, of course, but I’ve got Thor!”

Steve hurried to look over her shoulder, stopping on the way to grab one of the cold cuts and stuff it in his mouth.  There on the screen was the man from the earlier photograph, though with his hair cut even shorter and without the beard.  He was lying back in a reclining shirt, evidently with a computer in his lap.  His shirt was off, and there were painful-looking red welts, like a mass of pink spaghetti, all across his shoulders and neck.  One went all the way up to his cheek.  Steve had never seen anything like it.

“What happened?” Steve asked.

“This?”  The man on the screen glanced down at his strange injury.  “I arrived in this body as its owner was ‘catching some early morning waves’, and was unprepared to keep my balance on the board.  I fell into the water, and there did battle with a Midgardian monster called a _jelly-fish_.  Though it was but little, it was fierce, and Elsa Hemsworth insisted I be taken to the hospital.”  The face might look strange, but the voice and diction were _definitely_ Thor’s.

“He was discharged after a couple of hours,” Nat said.  “No mere fish of jelly can contend with the son of Odin.”

“I will come at once if you can tell me where to meet you,” Thor said.  “The Hemsworth family has been most welcoming, and I have promised to return their loved one’s body without further harm.”

“Do you have any idea where we can find Loki?” Steve asked.

Thor, however, was distracted, as a voice off-camera asked, “can I say hi?”

“Of course you may, Miss Alaska,” said Thor.

A girl of five or six, with sandy blonde hair in a ponytail, climbed up on top of Thor to wave at the camera.  “Hi, Captain America!” she said.  “Hi, Black Widow!”

“Hi, Alaska.”  Steve waved.  Natasha did likewise.

“Can I come with you to find Loki?” Alaska asked Thor eagerly.

“It is brave of you to offer, but no,” Thor replied.  “When you are grown, I’m sure you will be a mighty warrior, as is your father.”

Steve was about to ask what Thor had _told_ the Hemsworth clan and what they’d said about it, but just then, Dodger suddenly sat up and barked.  Steve looked down and shushed the dog, but a moment later he heard the front door open and shut.

“Danielle?”  The voice was Johansson’s husband.  “Did I leave my blue folio in the kitchen?”

Steve and Natasha traded a glance, then both looked around the room.  At the end of the counter was a blue leather document folio, with post-it notes sticking out of it.

“We gotta go, Thor,” said Nat.  “I’ll call you again later.”  She closed the laptop and slipped down from the stool.  “I’ll handle this,” she promised Steve, and scooped up the folio.  “Hang on to your dog.”

She hurried off to the front door, and Steve grabbed Dodger.  Where could he hide?  Most of the cabinets had glass doors… except for the tall one down the end, furthest from the patio doors.  Steve opened it, and found brooms and a vacuum cleaner.  That would do.  He squeezed inside and held on to Dodger tightly, hoping the dog wouldn’t bark again.

“Sssssh, buddy,” said Steve, as Dodger whined and wiggled in his arms.  “Just be quiet for a minute.”

There were voices.  Steve strained to hear them, but couldn’t make out the words.  Natasha greeted the man warmly and she must have given him the folio, but the reply was an annoyed question – it might have included the word _barking_.  An argument began.

“Daddy!” Mari called, and Steve heard her arrhythmic footsteps as she descended the stairs one at a time.  “Did you miss your plane again?”

“Hi, sweetie,” Johansson’s husband replied.  “I’m trying not to – but does Mommy have a friend over?”

Steve couldn’t hear Mari’s reply over his own pounding heart ,but he _knew_ she wasn’t old enough to understand the need to lie, even if he and Nat had told her to.  Moments later, doors began banging, as Johansson’s husband searched the house.  Steve tried to stand perfectly still, holding his breath until his head began to spin.

“I told you never to bring him back here!” the husband shouted.

“For Christ’s sake, Richard, he’s a _co-worker_!” Nat said.  “We were just going over the script!”

“What part?  The love scenes?” he snarled.

“Why don’t you trust me?” she demanded.

“Because you keep giving me reasons not to!”

Darville’s furious footsteps entered the kitchen, and the broom cupboard was the only place in there where a grown man could hide.  Sure enough, the door was flung open.  Dodger wiggled out of Steve’s arms and ran.

“There you are!”  Darville grabbed Steve’s shirt and dragged him out.  “I _told_ you never to come back to my house again!”

“Stop this right now!” Natasha ordered.  “You’re scaring Mari!”

Richard Darville was not interested in anything she had to say.  He wound up to punch Steve, and both Steve and Nat reacted on instinct.  She grabbed his arm and twisted it back so that the punch would miss – Steve shoved the man back with a kick to the gut, and because he still felt weak and slow, he did so as hard as he could.  The result was that Darville was thrown against the patio door.  The glass shattered in a small explosion of tiny cubes, and an alarm blared.  Dodger, upset by the noise, started barking frantically.

Darville picked himself up, slowly.  Ashamed of what he’d just done, Steve went to help him, but that only frightened the man – he crawled a few steps away before managing to get to his feet, and then when he did, he ran.

“Help!  Help!” the man shouted, heading around the house back to the street.  “I’ve just been attacked in my own home!”

Dodger continued barking.  Steve knelt down and started trying to quiet the dog, who thought this was a game and bounced up to lick Steve’s face.  Natasha found the alarm panel and tore it out of the wall, then yanked out some of the wires to shut it down.

“Mommy?” asked Mari.  She was standing in the kitchen doorway with big, frightened eyes, clutching a plush Dumbo toy in both hands.

Natasha didn’t answer immediately, but for perhaps the first time Steve could remember, the expression on her face spoke _exactly_ what she was thinking – and she was horrified.  She had made a terrible mistake coming here, and it was only now that she was starting to understand what the consequences would be for Mari and her mother.

“Yes, Mari?” she asked finally.

Instead of asking a question, Mari toddled up with her arms held out.  Nat dropped to her knees and gave the child a hug, partly just because Mari needed one, but probably also so that this little girl wouldn’t see the tears in Natasha’s eyes.

“I’m very proud of you, Mari,” said Nat, forcing her voice to stay level even as her eyes overflowed.  “You did a very good thing.  You told Daddy the truth.  Promise me you’ll always tell the truth, even if it upsets people, okay?”

Mari just squeezed her.

“Promise me,” Nat repeated.

“I promise,” said Mari.  “Cross my heart.”

There were sirens outside.  Somebody – maybe Darville, maybe one of the neighbours – had called the cops.  Steve glanced over his shoulder at the broken window, and then back at Natasha.  “Romanov, we gotta go,” he said.

“We can’t leave Mari alone!” she protested.

“We…” Steve began, and then realized he had nothing to follow it with.  She was right.  Mari was only three years old – leaving her in this house alone would be a crime in itself, not to mention the mental anguish it would cause her to be abandoned by both parents just before the police barged in.  They couldn’t take her with them, either.  Neither knew what they’d have to do in order to find Loki and drag him home to their own universe, but both were sure that was no job for a small child.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

When the police entered the kitchen a few minutes later, they found Steve and Natasha waiting there with their hands up.

“My daughter is in the rec room,” said Nat, as both were placed in handcuffs.  “She’ll need somebody to watch her.”

“Her father is waiting outside, Ma’am,” a policewoman said.

They were escorted into a waiting car, and left alone there for a few minutes while the police photographed the kitchen and took a statement from Johansson’s enraged husband.  Steve expected Nat to get them out of the handcuffs, but she didn’t – she just stared silently out the window, lost in thought.  Outside, the sun was going down.

“We should have just done the research in my trailer,” said Steve.

“Too much chance of being interrupted,” Nat replied miserably.  She was trying to convince herself, not him.

Steve said nothing more, as he realized he was being _mean_.  She knew she’d made a mistake, and she didn’t need it rubbed in her face right now.

“I wouldn’t have come here unless it seemed like the best option at the time,” Nat added.  “I _did_ want to see her daughter.  I wanted to know what kind of parent I would have been.  Now I know.”  She swallowed hard.  “It really did seem like a good idea at the time.  Nobody around, someplace to sleep if we had to spend the night…”

She had to stop then, as the driver got back in the car.  The policewoman locked the door and called in to the station, then looked over her shoulder at her two suspects.

“Hello, Superheroes,” she said.

“Officer,” Steve replied, with a slight nod.

The cop started the car.  “Welcome to the real world,” she told them sardonically.  “Where throwing people you don’t like out windows has _consequences_.”

“Imagine that,” said Nat.

* * *

At the police station they had their photographs and fingerprints taken, and were asked dozens of questions while frowning officers wrote things down.  Steve denied that Evans and Johansson were having an affair even as he actually had no idea, and wondered what this actor was going to think when he came back to find himself with a criminal record.  At least it would be pretty minor compared to the one he must be dealing with right now, in Steve’s world.

With that done, Steve and Nat were escorted to separate holding cells and left there to stew.  Steve waited until nobody was looking, then grabbed the bars in both hands and tried to bend them.

Back home he would have been able to do it – Stark had once cajoled him into trying, after seeing the feat depicted in an old Hercules movie, and had been delighted by the result.  This time, of course, the bars did not budge.  Steve strained until his shoulders stung, but then had to give up and sit down on the uncomfortable cot.  He would have to wait for Natasha to get them out.  It probably wouldn’t take long, once she stopped moping long enough to do it.

So, he thought – this was what it was like to be _normal_.

It wasn’t something Steve had ever thought about before, but now that he did – he’d never _been_ normal, had he?  Steve Rogers had been a skinny, sickly little kid, always unwell and in constant pain, and then the serum had transformed him into a superhero.  _Normal_ lay somewhere between, in a place he’d never been before.  It felt dull and weak and clumsy, but then, he was coming _down_ to it from peak physical condition.  What would it have been like if he’d come _up_ to it from his previous state?  Everything was relative, after all.

Eventually Steve nodded off, only to wake again with a start.  Somebody was rattling the door of his cell.  Had Nat come to break him out?  It appeared not – the person standing outside was another police officer, a middle-aged Latino man with a thin mustache.  Steve’s watch said it was 12:02 AM.

“Wake up, Sleeping beauty,” said the cop.  “You’ve got a visitor.”

“I do?”  Steve sat up.  “Who is it?”  What if it were some member of Evans’ family, here to ask what was wrong with him?

“It’s a surprise,” said the cop.  “Come and see.”

For a moment, a flame of hope flared up behind Steve’s breastbone – maybe it was Thor!  Maybe Thor had arrived and they were going to find Loki and get out of here!  But Thor was half a planet away, and unless he’d either recovered his powers there was no way he could have gotten here yet.  The warm flicker was replaced by a cold dread, because if it wasn’t Thor, it could only be somebody who would lead them to another disaster.

Maybe it was Loki.  It did occur to Steve that if Loki, too, were occupying the body of a human actor, then Steve would probably be able to take him – but hot on the heels of _that_ thought, he remembered that he was already in a police station under arrest.  Beating Loki up _here_ would be their worst idea yet.

As it turned out, the visitor was neither Thor, nor Loki, nor a stranger.  The policeman escorted Steve out to the station’s front foyer, where a man was waiting by the front desk.  He was smaller than either Loki or Thor, and middle-aged, with gray in his short dark hair.  It had been a couple of days since he’d shaved, and he was wearing plastic-rimmed glasses and a gray peaked cap.  He was looking at his phone, idly fiddling with some app, until he looked up and saw Steve.

“Hey, Dorito,” he said.


	5. Downey and Out

For a moment it was all Steve could do to keep his mouth from hanging open.  Of all people, he never would have imagined that Tony Stark would show up to rescue him – and if he _had_ , he might have thought he’d refuse to be rescued.  Under the circumstances, however, he would take what was offered him, even if it came with the Dorito joke.

That didn’t make it any less of a surprise, though.  Steve made sure his mouth was closed, then searched for words and managed, “what are you doing here?”

“Bailing you out,” Stark replied, tucking his phone back in his pocket.  “What’s it _look_ like I’m doing?”

A thousand other questions bubbled through Steve’s brain, ranging from _how did you get here after Thor broke the rune stone?_ to _did you really think the apology letter was douchy?_   Steve considered them all and decided they could wait.  “Then let’s get Romanov and go.”

Stark gave him a sidelong look.  “You okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Steve admitted. “You?”  Damn it, they were going to have to _talk_ about it now.  Maybe not right away, because this situation with Loki was so much more important, but sooner or later they were going to have to sit down and _talk_ about the whole mess with the Accords and Bucky and possibly end up fighting again.  Steve wasn’t looking forward to that, but again, it was better than being in police lockup in the wrong universe.

“Not bad,” said Stark.  “We going?”

“We’re going,” Steve agreed.

Natasha was escorted out to join them, and one of the cops brought Dodger on a leash.  Steve knelt down to greet the dog while Stark posted bail for the two prisoners  Once their things had been returned and all the paperwork signed, Nat immediately began asking questions.

“Since you’re here,” she said, “I assume you’ve got a way back.”

Stark held the station door for them.  “Well, I didn’t take the bus,” he said.

In the parking lot, he took out a fob and pressed the button, and Steve did a double-take as this got a beep from an extremely un-Tony-Stark-like Dodge minivan.  Stark himself didn’t even flinch, though.  He opened the driver’s door and climbed in, and Steve had to remind himself that neither the vehicle nor the body of the man driving it actually belonged to Tony Stark.  Maybe the actor who played him wasn’t such a big star as Scarlett Johansson with her pink corvette and her Malibu mansion.  It would also explain what Stark was _wearing_ : black track pants, a striped cardigan, and a faded t-shirt with the words _Enjoy Mello Yello_ on the front.  He looked more like a particularly embarrassing suburban househusband than a billionaire superhero, or even an actor.

Steve climbed into the back of the van, while Natasha got in the front passenger side.  “How did you find us?” was her next question.

“Well, when celebrities assault their husbands and get thrown in jail, word kind of goes around,” Stark replied, doing up his seat belt.  “I told Ridley I’d bail you out as a special favour.”  He put the van in gear, and got out on the road.

Steve leaned forward between the seats.  “Why didn’t _you_ get us out?” he asked Nat.

“I didn’t have my stuff,” Nat replied.  “Johansson doesn’t carry lock picks, and even I can’t open a jail cell with lip gloss.”

Stark didn’t say anything right away, which was odd – he usually couldn’t resist weighing in on anything and everything.  Now, he waited until they were out on the road, heading east towards Santa Monica, before he spoke.

“All right,” he said, “now that we’re all stuck in here with each other for the next sixty miles, who wants to tell me how you got into this fine mess?”  He sounded like he was their father – not mad, just disappointed in children who ought to know better.

“Where should we start?” asked Steve.  They had no idea how much Stark already knew.

“At the beginning,” Stark replied.  “I’ll follow along.”

“The beginning.”  Steve nodded.  “That would be Natasha coming to see me in Wakanda a few days ago, to tell me Thor was back on Earth.”

“Thor was back on Earth,” Stark echoed.  It was a question, but only by implication, not by tone.  He didn’t believe Thor would return without contacting him.

Nat came to the same conclusion.  “The reason he didn’t go see _you_ is because I told him not to,” she explained.  “We didn’t want to make a big production out of it with weapons and costumes and get the politicians involved.  That meant Rogers and I were the only people available.”

“T’Challa gave us a flight as far as Morocco,” Steve went on.

“Because we were going to Oslo,” Nat agreed.  “Loki needed something from a museum there, so Thor asked us to meet him.”

They continued this way, telling the story in bits and pieces while constantly interrupting each other to fill in the missing details.  Stark continued to sit silent.  His eyes were fixed on the road ahead as they drove down the dark Pacific Coast Highway, and Steve began to wonder if he were even listening.  It was so unlike Stark not to have anything to say that at one point Steve just stopped talking and waited for him to respond.

After a few seconds of silence Stark said, “go on.  I want to know where you’re going with this.”

They took him through their rather violent transfer between universes, skipped over most of the embarrassing things that had happened on the movie set, and brought the story up to where they’d had to defend themselves from Darville.  There they stopped, because they figured Stark already knew what h ad happened after that.

Stark nodded thoughtfully.  “So _that’s_ why Hiddles threw a fit, is it?” he asked.

Steve and Nat both perked up.  “Hiddles?  Hiddleston is Loki, right?” Steve asked.  The name had definitely been on Natasha’s list.

“Sure is,” said Stark.  “He’s run off to plot our doom, has he?”

“Where is he?” Steve wanted to know.  “Or where _was_ he, before he disappeared?”  That would at least give them a place to start from.

“Last I heard he was up in the Rockies in Canada, playing Sir John A. McDonald in some railway movie,” Stark said, “but I think he had the weekend off for a convention appearance anyway.  Conquering the world, one fangirl at a time!”  He chuckled, but then turned serious again.  “Okay, that was fun.  Now, really, what happened?”

“What?  But we…” Steve said, and then felt something inside him constrict as he realized he’d seriously mis-read the entire situation.  He’d never questioned that this was Stark come to look for them – and even if he had, being addressed as _Dorito_ would have settled it for him.  The Doritos bag existed in this universe, too, though – Evans had it framed in his trailer.  Could it have originated on the internet and had the actors pick it up, just as had happened in their own universe?

“But what?” asked Stark.  “The only buts I see here are _your_ butts I just bailed out of jail.  You realize how serious that is, right?  You’re going to be charged with assault.  Scarlett, if Richard files for divorce on the grounds of abuse, he’s going to get custody of Marigold.  Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” said Natasha, voice soft but firm.  “Yes, I do.”

“Okay, then.”  Stark’s voice was a little gentler down – he could tell that she meant it.  “Remember when I said you guys could tell me anything because I’ve probably done worse?  Just tell me.  No judging,” he promised.  “I know people make mistakes.  Before I can help, I need to know what I’m helping you with.  For starters, how long has this affair been going on?  I know you two have been working together forever, but you’ve always told the media you were just friends.”

There was a moment of silence as Steve and Natasha both mulled over the consequences of this latest mistake.

“You’re not Tony Stark, are you?” Steve asked, just to be sure.

“Right now?” the man in the driver’s seat said – _now_ he was annoyed.  “No, I am not Tony Stark.  And _you_ are not Steve Rogers, and _she_ is not Natasha Romanov, so let’s talk about our problems like adults, please.”

For a moment Steve couldn’t decide what to do, and it was clear that Natasha couldn’t, either.  They’d already told him the whole story, and he hadn’t believed it.  Where did that leave them?

“Okay,” Natasha tried.  “Um… Robert.  It’s Robert, right?  Robert Downey?”

“It is,” the man said, unamused.

“Let’s pretend that everything we already told you is true…” Nat began.

“Let’s not,” Downey interrupted, “because this really doesn’t seem like a good time for that!”

“Let’s _do_ ,” Nat insisted, “because it _is_ true.  You can call Thor and ask him – he’s got Hemsworth’s phone.  We talked to him on Skype earlier.”  She pulled out Johansson’s cell phone, which the police had given back to her.

“He’s going to come meet us as soon as we can arrange a place,” Steve said.  “You said Loki was in Canada.  Where, exactly?”

“I’m going to pull over and make you two walk in a minute, if you can’t take this seriously,” Downey threatened them.

Nat was dialling her phone.  “Do you always treat your colleagues like children?” she asked

“When they act like it, yeah,” said Downey.  “I’m gonna take you two back to Ridley so you can finish your movie.  I know I can’t force you to accept help, but if and when you want it, you know where to find me.  I’m not going to make a game out of it.”

Nat turned around and handed the phone to Steve.  “Talk to Thor,” she said, and then undid her seat belt.

She climbed into Downey’s lap and grabbed the steering wheel – he yelped in surprise, and the minivan lurched unpleasantly to the right, taking out several garbage and recycling bins lined up in front of the beach properties there.  A moment later it swerved to the left again, and got back on the road.  Somebody behind them honked.

A woman’s voice answered Natasha’s phone.  “Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Hemsworth?” Steve asked.  “Can I talk to Thor?  I mean…”

“Just a second,” she said.

The van continued to wind back and forth across the lane of traffic, while people around them blared their horns or pulled over to get out of the way.  Then it straightened out, and a hand grabbed the top of the headrest on the passenger’s side.  It was too big to be Natasha’s.  Leaning forward a little, Steve saw Downey climb into the seat, with Nat now at the wheel.

“What the hell are you doing?” Downey asked.  “Scarlett, for crying out loud…”

The line picked up again.  “Captain?” asked Thor’s voice.

“Thor!” said Steve.  “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Have you found my brother, then?” Thor wanted to know.

“Maybe,” Steve said.

Natasha was now in full control of the van, and the driving was correspondingly smoother.  She sped up.  “Tell us where Loki is,” she ordered.

“If I tell you, will you let me out?” Downey asked.

“Maybe,” said Nat.

“Captain?” asked Thor.

“Sorry,” said Steve.  “Yeah, we’ve found somebody who might know.  Romanov’s questioning him right now.”

“Well, a wise individual will tell her quickly,” Thor said.

“Can I ask you something?”  Steve frowned.  “Hemsworth’s wife seems… she’s not too bothered by this, is she?  Did she… what did you tell her?  Or what did _she_ say to _you_?”

“Elsa?  I explained the situation to her, and she seemed quite agreeable,” Thor replied.  “She told the doctors that her husband does this all the time, for the entertainment of children.”

That explained a lot.

“I know where he’s _supposed_ to be,” Downey said.  “He’s supposed to be at some convention in Calgary!  I don’t know whether he’s actually going to show up!”

“That’ll do,” said Nat.  “Steve, did you hear that?”

“Yeah,” said Steve.  “Okay, Thor, according to the guy who isn’t Stark, Loki is supposed to be in Calgary, Canada.”  Steve had a vague idea where that was – towards the west end of the country, but not quite in the mountains.  “His actor was working on a film near there, so we can start our search.”

“I shall set off for the airport at once,” Thor promised.

“Great,” said Steve.  “We’ll meet you at arrivals.”  He covered the phone with one hand.  “Anything else I should ask him?”

“That ought to do for now.”  Nat pulled over.

“It will be a relief to return to our own realm,” said Thor.  “Until we meet again, Captain.”

Steve disconnected, and Nat reached over and opened the passenger-side door for Downey.  “There you go,” she said.

He looked out at the roadside, lined with palm trees and beach houses, then back at her.  “This is _my_ van,” he protested.

“You asked if you could get out once you told us where Loki is,” Nat reminded him.  “You told us, so I’m letting you out.  I’ll leave a note for Evans and Johansson to call you once we’ve found Loki and gotten out of here.  I’m sure they’ll appreciate your help more than we did.”

Downey climbed out.

Nat shut the door again and put the turn signal on to pull back out into traffic.  Steve looked back, and saw a light fall on Downey’s face.

“He’s making a phone call,” Steve said.  “What if he’s calling the police?”  If this were Downey’s van, he definitely knew the license plate number.  They didn’t need to end up _back_ in jail, especially when _nobody_ would bail them out of it this time.

“Shit,” said Nat, and stopped the van again.

They’d only gone a dozen yards or so up the road.  Steve worried that Downey would try to run when he realized they were coming back, but instead he jogged to meet them as Nat backed up.  She opened the door for him.

“Have you come to your senses?” he asked.

Natasha extended a hand.  Downey took it and climbed in, and as soon as he shut the door, Nat pressed the button to engage all the locks.  While their newly-acquired hostage was still reacting to _that_ , she snatched his phone and tossed it to Steve – then she hit the gas, heading east again.  Fellow drivers honked their horns again as she sped up to merge with the traffic.

“Hey!” Downey protested.  “ _Now_ what are you doing?”

“We can’t let you call the police,” Nat replied calmly.

“I wasn’t calling the police!  I was texting Susan!”

Steve checked the phone in his hands.  The open app was indeed a text conversation with ‘Susan’, most of which seemed to consist of sweet nothings and heart-eyed cat emojis.  At the very bottom, Downey had begun to type a new message: _ChrisE and ScarJo stole the van.  I’m gonna_ …

“It does say Susan,” Steve confirmed.

“Who is Susan?” Nat asked.

“You _know_ Susan,” said Downey.  “She’s my wife.”

“Is she Pepper?” asked Steve.  “I mean… is she the actress who plays Pepper Potts?”  That seemed a natural conclusion to come to.  He couldn’t imagine Stark marrying anyone but Pepper Potts regardless of what universe it happened in.

“What?  No.  Gwyneth Paltrow is Pepper,” said Downey.

They passed Pepperdine University, where the road divided in two.  To get to Los Angeles, they would have had to take the right fork and continue down the coast.  Nat took the left one, heading inland towards the mountains.

“Uh… where do you think you’re going?” asked Downey, his head turning to watch the green highway signs go by.

“Canada, of course,” said Natasha.  “You said that’s where Loki is.”

In Steve’s hand, Downey’s phone buzzed.

“That’ll be her,” he said.

Sure enough, when Steve checked, the phone identified the caller as ‘Susan’.  He connected and said, “hello?”

“Hello?” asked the voice that must be Mrs. Downey.  “Is this Chris?”

“Yes,” Steve said.  “Yes, this is Chris.”  He hoped it sounded convincing to _her_.

It must have, because she didn’t question it.  “Is Bob bringing you back to our place?”

“Uh, no,” said Steve.

Downey turned in his seat to reach back.  “Let me talk to her!” he said.  “Susan!  Can you hear me?”

“Tell Bob not to talk on the phone while he’s driving,” said Susan.

“She says…” Steve began.

“I’m not driving!”  Downey held out his hand as far as he could, his fingertips brushing Steve’s elbow.  “Please?” he asked.  “ _Please_?”  His brown eyes were huge and pleading.  It was an expression Steve had seen on Stark, but only when he was talking to either Pepper Potts or Colonel Rhodes, and never when he realized somebody else was watching.  “I won’t tell her,” he added, in a lower voice.  “I promise.  Just please, let me talk to her.”

He looked like a puppy who wanted a hug.  Somewhat against his better judgment, Steve gave him the phone.

“Susan!”  Downey put it to his ear.  “I’m so glad you called.”

Nat caught Steve’s eye in the rearview mirror and glared at him.  The message was clear that if _this_ went horribly wrong, too, she was holding _him_ responsible.

“Just listen, honey,” said Downey, leaning away from Natasha as if afraid she would grab the phone from him at any moment.  “Chris and Scarlett have _sort of_ kidnapped me…”

He was silent for a moment while his wife said something, mostly likely to ask what he meant by _sort of_.

“Well, they’re not actually going to hurt me, and they haven’t said anything about ransoming me off, so yeah, only sort of,” Downey said.  “I think they’re planning to plead insanity so they’re trying to convince me they’ve lost their minds.  It’s actually working pretty well so far.”

Steve undid his seat belt and tensed his legs, prepared to stand up and snatch the phone back if he had to.  Downey glanced back at him, and held up a hand to tell him no.

“No, don’t call anybody,” he said to Susan.  “It’ll all work itself out.  They say they’re going to Canada but that won’t work, so I’ll see what they’re up to and probably be home in a few hours.  Tell the kids Dad had some Iron Man stuff to do or something.  Okay.  I love you.  Sleep tight.”  He disconnected and handed the phone back to Steve.  “There,” he said.  “That’s all I wanted, just so she wouldn’t worry about me.”

Steve was startled.  Even now knowing that this wasn’t Stark – and _that_ was getting clearer and clearer with every word out of the man’s mouth – telling his wife not to call the police because ‘Chris and Scarlett’ wouldn’t hurt him was an awfully _trusting_ thing for Downey to do.  Now that he’d expressed that trust, furthermore, Steve would find it awfully hard to betray.  Maybe Downey knew that.  Or maybe, as the guy who’d played Tony Stark in a movie about Civil War, he should have known _better_.

“All right.”  Downey folded his arms across his chest and settled down in his seat.  “Whatever this is, whether it’s a publicity stunt or a practical joke or the aliens from _Galaxy Quest_ , I’ll ride along as far as it goes and see what happens.  I don’t think you’ll get into Canada, though.”

Canada wasn’t exactly an impenetrable fortress of a country as far as Steve knew – but then he figured out what Downey must be talking about.  “The terms of our bail were don’t leave California, weren’t they?”  Not allowed _into_ the United States in one universe, not allowed _out_ in the next.  Everybody loved placing restrictions on him.

 “You really think that’ll be a problem?” asked Natasha.

 “Probably not,” said Steve.

* * *

 They crossed the border into Nevada with no trouble, which definitely surprised Downey, and passed through Vegas before heading on into Utah.  Steve dozed in the back seat until Nat woke him up near the border of Idaho and told him to take a turn driving.  She was yawning as she crawled into the back to curl up, and Steve realized he couldn’t remember ever seeing her _sleepy_ before.  Natasha was like him – she could sleep anywhere and wake up alert and ready to go for as long as she needed to.  She got _tired_ , but not sleepy.  It seemed that she, too, was feeling the effects of being… well, a little more _human_ than usual.

Downey paid for gas and snacks, and they got back on the road.

Shortly after they’d entered Montana, with the sun coming up and Natasha still snoring in the back seat, Downey asked, “were you two already in some kind of trouble?  Is that what this is?”  He was worried again now.  “And you’re trying to get out of the country?”

“We told you what happened,” said Steve.

Downey scowled again.  “You can’t ask me to believe you really think that.”

“Why would we tell you something like that if it wasn’t true?” Steve tried.

“Hell if I know,” Downey said.  “Maybe you’ve been reading too many internet posts with that joke about how Marvel grows their characters in tubes of blue goo like something out of _Avatar_.”

Steve turned to look at him with a concerned frown.  “Do people actually believe that?”  Maybe _that_ was how this universe really worked.  Maybe Chris Evans looked exactly like Steve because he was… who knew?  A clone, perhaps.  Or something worse.

“There are people who believe JonBenet’s parents faked her death and she grew up to be Katy Perry,” said Downey, “so yeah, there probably are, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.  You understand that, right?”  He sounded like he wasn’t sure Steve did.  “You’re not anybody’s science experiment.  You have parents who are probably wondering what the hell you’re doing right now.”

_Parents_.  Steve hadn’t thought about that, but it was true – this Chris Evans must have a mother and father, and maybe siblings and grandparents, too.  If they were still alive and they met Steve, they would think he was family.  Would Mrs. Evans drape a blanket around his shoulders and make him a cup of tea, the way his own mother had used to when he got home on cold days?  Would her husband smile at Steve and tell him he was proud of him, the way Steve had always _wished_ his father would?

Their numbers were probably in Evans’ phone, which suddenly felt very heavy in Steve’s pocket.  He could call them and find out.

Rather than do so, however, Steve pulled the phone out and reached to drop it on the floor in the back, where it would be difficult for him to retrieve.  The idea lingered, though, like electricity crackling on the back of his neck.  Suddenly Steve understood, on a very visceral level, just why Natasha had insisted on going to Johansson’s house.  Having even the _illusion_ of something you wanted so very badly, dangling in front of you like that… that was the stuff of parables.  It was so easy to tell himself that it would do no harm to just call, but then, Nat had probably thought it would do no harm to just read Rosie a story, to just _pretend_ for five minutes, and he’d seen what happened then.  No, he could not call Chris Evans’ parents.  Definitely not.

“Evans has parents,” said Steve.  “Mine died a long time ago.”

Downey groaned and rubbed his forehead.  “Please stop,” he said.  “I don’t want to have you committed.  If they tried to replace you, the fans would riot… especially if it’s Channing Tatum.” 

* * *

 

It was almost exactly twenty-four hours since Downey had bailed them out of jail when Natasha, back in the driver’s seat, pulled to a stop in the parking lot at Calgary International Airport.  Downey had now nodded off, himself, and missed seeing how Nat got them into Canada.  This was probably all for the best.  As she’d predicted, it hadn’t been a problem.  At the airport they got a cheap motel room where they could all shower and change their clothes, and then they went to the arrivals gate to meet Thor’s flight from Australia.

They all looked slightly ridiculous and not very superheroic, dressed as they were in whatever souvenir clothes the shops in the airport had been offering.  Thor, on the other hand, walked in wearing camo-print shorts, a white t-shirt, a pair of Ray-Bans, and wheeling a little hard-sided suitcase with Hello Kitty on it, but the effect was the same as it had been when he’d tried dressing down in Oslo.  No matter what he was wearing, he still walked and talked like the God of Thunder.

“Friends!” he said, and gathered Steve, Natasha, and Downey all up in one hug.  Chris Hemsworth was not as immense as the real Thor, but he was still a very large man with bulging arms that could encompass all three of them.  “It delights my heart to see familiar faces!”

“Good to see you, too, Thor,” Steve managed, with what little air the embrace had left him.

“That includes you, Robert Downey Junior!” Thor added, stepping back to take a look at the unwilling fourth member of their party.  “I have entertained myself on the flight by reading about our counterparts’ lives and work.  Your recovery from your lowest point was truly heroic, as is your dedication to making sure others do no repeat your mistakes!”

“Thanks,” said Downey, a little dazed.  “Trying to help people with their mistakes is how I got into this, as a matter of fact,” he added, with a glance at Steve and Nat.

“I am famished after my journey,” Thor said, “for the food they serve on an airplane would not fill a child.  Fortunately, the young man seated next to me told me of an establishment belonging to Mr. Tim Horton, which makes the finest coffee and donuts in Midgard!  Let us eat, and perhaps we can learn more of this convention Loki is to appear at!”

Near the exits, the airport had racks of brochures for things to see and do in the city, which included an ad for the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, beginning that day at the Roundup Centre convention hall.  While Thor tried several flavours of Tim Horton’s donuts, Steve scanned through the guest list.

“Here he is!” he said.  “Tom Hiddleston, of Marvel’s _Thor_ and _Kong: Skull Island_!”  Then he looked at the picture, and did a double-take at the sight of the smiling, bearded blond man in glasses.  “It doesn’t even look like him.”

Natasha leaned over his shoulder.  “No, he’s got the nose,” she said.

“I would not take him for my brother, nose or no,” Thor said.  “It has been long since I saw Loki smile so warmly.”

“Do we have to worry about running into anybody else we know?” Nat asked.  “Or who thinks they know _us_?”

Downey was sitting on the other side of Steve, eating a grilled bacon and cheese sandwich.  He jabbed his finger at a picture of a woman with long, straight dark hair, identified by the caption as _Jennifer Connelly, of Jim Henson’s_ Labyrinth.  “We might see Paul,” he said, “but I doubt any of you would recognize him.”

“Which Paul?” asked Nat.

“Never mind,” said Downey.  “Actually, if we do meet him, I want to see if you can figure it out for yourselves.”

Steve wondered if that meant he believed them now.  More likely he was just seeing how far they’d take their joke.  Steve turned the page to look at the rest of the guests, and saw pictures that promised actors from _Westworld_ and _Once Upon a Time_.  Then he turned another page, and his heart stopped dead in his chest.

_Meet the cast of Marvel’s_ Agent Carter.


	6. Opportunity Lost

The Roundup Centre was part of the Stampede Grounds, an area set aside for the city of Calgary to hold a sort of cowboy-themed Mardi Gras every summer.  Most of the area was open and paved, to provide space for the midway and carnival booths, with the convention centre wedged at one end between the train station and a saddle-shaped sports arena.  It was a sprawling red brick building with green metal accents, which had probably been intended to look Victorian early in the design process, but then a committee had gotten involved.  The entire area was _swarming_ with people of every possible age, size, and colour, some of them in very elaborate costumes.  The lineup to enter was out the door and halfway around the building.

Three dimensionally-displaced superheroes, one overtired actor, and a dog got off the train, and then stood on the footbridge over the tracks, leaning on the concrete guard wall, and considered their next move.

“If the people at this convention are, uh, people who like superhero movies…” Steve began.

“Nerds,” said Downey firmly.  “The word you’re looking for is _nerds_.”  He didn’t mean it as an insult, though – in fact, he spoke the word with great affection.

“Right,” said Steve.  “Should we wear some kind of disguise?”  That was another thing Steve had never been good at.  He always stuck out in a crowd, no matter what he wore – although at least he wasn’t _quite_ as bad at it as Thor.

“Well, we’d be worried about them recognizing us as Captain America and the Black Widow,” Natasha said thoughtfully, “and we already don’t look much like Captain America and the Black Widow.  Captain America doesn’t have a beard, and the Black Widow isn’t blonde.”

“True,” said Downey, “although there might be some set pictures from your current project floating around the internet.  Nobody will recognize Hemsworth, though – not with that stuff all over his normally flawless face.”  Thor was still covered in welts from his close encounter with the jellyfish.

Nat put her hands on her hips.  “We can’t just wait in line.  Somebody will _definitely_ recognize us if they’ve got time to look, and we don’t want anyone warning Loki we’re coming.  I think the roof is probably our best bet.  The problem is getting up there without being seen…”

“I have a better idea,” said Downey.  “Follow me.”

He led them indoors, down a flight of steps, and to the head of the line at the convention hall entrance.  A set of security guards were checking people’s badges and taking admission money and one of these, a woman with dusty-brown hair in a messy bun, held up a hand to stop them.

“No skipping the line,” she said.  “If you pre-paid you have to go around to…”

Downey took his sunglasses off.  “I’m Robert Downey Junior,” he said.

The security guard cut herself off in mid-sentence.  She stared at Downey for a moment, then looked at his companions.  Nat smiled and waved, Steve nodded, and Thor smiled.  Then she looked back at Downey again, studying his face as if trying to figure out what the trick was.

“Let me call somebody,” she said, taking out her phone.

She got a picture of the group and sent it to someone, and whoever it was apparently found _I’m Robert Downey Junior_ to be a fairly compelling argument.  The guard waved them through.  The fans of superhero movies – the nerds – who’d been waiting for entry had started to realize there was something going on, and were trying to get a better look, but none of them were willing to give up their places in line to do so.

“Can I get a picture with you?” somebody shouted.

“I’ll be inside, Honey-Bunnies!” Downey replied.  He blew a kiss to the crowd in general, and then headed indoors with the others.  “There you go,” he said, pleased with himself.  “We’re in, no waiting!”

“They recognized us, though,” Steve protested.

“They recognized _me_ ,” Downey corrected him.  “I’ll hog the attention, and you guys can just slip by incognito.”

Natasha shook her head.  “Are you _sure_ you’re not Tony Stark?”

“Most days.”

Inside, somebody gave them a program and a map of the convention hall.  The main room was a vast open space with a high, metal-raftered ceiling and a concrete floor like a warehouse, but instead of crates and boxes there were several aisles of tables and booths offering everything imagineable.  The guests included not just actors but artists, film-makers, writers, and everybody else involved in the production of media.  A mini-studio had been set up so that people in costumes could have professional photos taken – when the group passed, several people in distressingly well-done Chi’Tauri armor were standing there while the flash bulbs popped.  Further up the first aisle was a table selling crocheted Avengers dolls.  In the next row, somebody was offering poster prints of a very detailed drawing in which Steve and Bucky were kissing in the rain like lovers.  Steve had to stop short and stare at it, blinking several times to be sure he wasn’t seeing things.

“Accurate?” asked Downey, poking Steve in the ribs.

Steve tried to imagine what Bucky would have thought about such a thing.  His reaction would probably have been more embarrassing than the picture itself.

“He’s blushing!” Downey laughed.  “Wait until you see the ones where you’re kissing _me_!”

Another stall was selling costumes.  Several had boxes and boxes of comic books, all carefully wrapped in plastic.  One big one was offering swords and knives that looked far too dangerous for some of the younger attendees.  On a corner was a replica of Mjolnir on a styrofoam boulder, and people were having their pictures taken pretending they were straining to lift it.  There were video games, a Japanese pastry shop, an actual tattoo studio… something for everybody except perhaps those who preferred peace and quiet all of it thronged with what Downey had described as _nerds_.

Steve and Thor stuck out in crowds, but Natasha slipped into this one as if she were just another nerd herself, and to Steve’s surprise, Downey seemed quite comfortable.  He would not have imagined Tony Stark being able to walk around unnoticed in any universe.

“What time is it?” Steve asked, as he flipped through the booklet.  There were events and talks scheduled for each of the celebrity guests, some singly and others in groups.  Hopefully they could catch Loki either going _into_ or coming _out of_ one of these.

Downey checked his watch.  “Eleven twenty.”

Steve ran his finger down a timetable.  “It says photo ops with Tom Hiddleston begin at noon.”

“Then we have time to be there ahead of him,” Thor said.  “This time, _we_ shall have the element of surprise.  Where will he be?”

“It says Palomino Room D.”  Steve turned the map upside-down in his hands, trying to match it up with the layout he could see.  “That way, should be.”

“As long as he’s actually there,” Nat said cynically.

“If he never actually showed up, there’ll be an announcement,” said Downey, walking fast to keep pace with Steve and Thor’s longer legs.  “They’ll have a sign on the door something.”

They left the massive main hall, on the way passing even more activities and exhibits.  There was a very detailed, six-foot-tall model of Godzilla made entirely of lego bricks.  An area had been roped off with tables and chairs for people to play card and board games.  There was even a booth where a man was selling pet tarantulas – if _that_ had anything to do with superheroes, Steve couldn’t imagine what it was.

The noise level dropped sharply as they went through the doors into the carpeted hallway outside.  Signs indicated what was going on in Palomino Rooms A, B, and C, and another directed them to D around the corner.  Steve’s eyes drifted past these and then, as if by a force beyond his control, they were wrenched back to Palomino Room B.

_Q &A with the cast of _Agent Carter.

Steve hesitated.  The picture in the brochure had definitely been of Peggy – Peggy in a twenty-first century blouse and with her hair un-curled but absolutely recognizable as _Peggy_.  The actress who’d portrayed her in this world’s movies was in that room, talking to her fans.  The desire to peek in was almost overwhelming.  It wouldn’t be the same, Steve told himself.  Like Natasha reading a story to Mari, it could only end in disaster, and yet…

The others had gotten a bit ahead of him and were having some sort of conversation about the Godzilla statue.  Steve heard Downey say, “but Gamera’s source of strength is _children_ , so if all of _them_ believe he can win…”

“Why would these beasts need to fight each other at all?” Thor asked.  “Surely both are protectors of this realm, at least according to Jane and Darcy.  Is Gamera not the Guardian of the Universe?”

“Because they’re _kaiju_ ,” Downey insisted.  “It’s what they do!”

Steve looked back at the door to Palomino Room B.  He knew he couldn’t _talk_ to her.  Interaction with Mari and Darville had led to catastrophe, and talking to Downey had almost gone the same way… but maybe he could _look_.  If he stood in the back and watched for a couple of minutes, and slipped out before anybody noticed him, that might work.  He could satisfy his overriding curiosity and get back to what they were _here_ to do.

His hand was shaking slightly as Steve opened the door.

The lights in the room had been dimmed except at the back, where they shone on a long table with four people sitting at it.  At the left end was a tall woman with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a floral blouse.  Steve didn’t recognize her.  Next to her was a man in a black shirt and gray blazer – he did look vaguely familiar, but Steve couldn’t put a name to him.  Third was… it took Steve a moment, since the man looked older than he remembered and was clean-shaven, with his hair all over the place and dressed in a modern leather jacket.  But good lord… that was Howard Stark!

He was in the middle of answering somebody’s question, and listening to him _talk_ was a bizarre experience.  _He had a British accent_.

“I figured that a lot of things Tony would have gotten from his father were things he wasn’t aware of,” the man was saying.  “I did take a lot of cues from Downey, but I focused on the things people do without thinking.  Where they look, how they move their hands, stuff like that, because I thought that’s where his legacy from Howard would show most strongly.”

Hands went up throughout the audience.  A girl with a microphone offered it to a young woman sitting in the fourth row.

“This question is for Hayley,” the audience member said.  “It may not be appropriate, but… you’ve said you think Peggy and Steve consummated their relationship?”

The last person at the table, on the far right, was a woman.  She was wearing very little makeup, and her hair was long and tied back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a stripe t-shirt with three-quarter length sleeves – but the warm brown eyes were Peggy’s and the smile she showed when she pulled her microphone closer to speak was all Peggy’s.  Seeing it made Steve’s heart feel like it twisted up, like a pair of hands had reached inside him to wring his organs out like wet laundry.  His legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore, and he only just made it the few steps to the nearest row of folding metal audience chairs, where he sat down heavily.

“Yes,” the actress said, “I do remember saying that.”  After hearing British Howard, Steve had been momentarily terrified she would be an American.  To his relief, she was not.  Her accent was a little less precise than Peggy’s educated BBC radio pronunciation, but it was music to his ears.

“Well, Chris Evans has said he thinks Steve’s a virgin,” the questioner went on.  “Does that change your mind?”

Steve’s brain suddenly caught up with his heart.  Had he just heard this?  Was this woman asking, in front of an _audience_ , whether Steve and Peggy had ever made love?  And was Peggy actually going to _answer_ her?

“You’ve got to remember that our interpretations aren’t necessarily canonical…” she began.

Howard leaned forward to his own microphone.  “Excuse me, if I may,” he said.  “There’s no contradiction here.  Steve and Peggy just never agreed on whether oral counts.”

The audience laughed, while Steve lowered his head so nobody could see his face – if the heat in his cheeks were anything to go by, he must be bright pink.  Sure enough, this was already a disaster, and he hadn’t even _needed_ to say anything!  He should never have come.  If he’d stayed with the others instead of sneaking off, he wouldn’t be sitting here listening to Howard tell an entire audience about the time Peggy had…

The girl with the microphone moved on to another question.  “Mr. D’Arcy,” a balding man in a black t-shirt said, “can I ask you a question about _Jupiter Ascending_?”

Everybody looked at the slightly familiar man Steve had not yet identified.  The man leaned forward and made a one-word reply.

“No,” he said.

There was more laughter.

There were more questions.  The next person asked the woman on the far end of the table a question about the Red Room, which Steve was glad Natasha wasn’t there to hear.  He kept his head down.  He knew he should just leave, but what would happen when he stood up?  These actors would know Chris Evans from the _Captain America_ movies.  What if one of them recognized him?  If he waited, he could mix with the crowd when they left in a few minutes… and maybe somebody else would ask Peggy another question, a less-embarrassing one, and he could hear her voice one more time…

No, he had to go.  When the lights came up, she would definitely see him.  His knees were still trembling a little, but he got to his feet and paused for one last longing look at her face…

“I see you back there, Chris!” the actress called out.  “Do you have a question?”

Steve froze.  _Oh shit_.

The flight-or-fight response – ‘punch everybody and run’, Natasha had said – flared up, but it was too late.  The woman with the microphone was already on her way, and people in the audience were whispering and turning to stare, curious if that were _really_ Chris Evans in the back row.  Somebody particularly sadistic even turned on the back row of lights so that everyone could see him more clearly.  Then the mike was in his face, and people were waiting for him to speak.

It took him a moment to think of a question, and he immediately knew he’d hate the answer, but he couldn’t come up with anything better.  “Uh,” he said, “if Steve came back.  I mean, if they found him alive and woke him up while you were still… in the forties.  What would… what would she say to him?”

Peggy… no, that _wasn’t_ Peggy.  The name in the brochure, the name the woman with the inappropriate question had used, was _Hayley_.  Hayley thought about it.  “Do you want the funny answer, or the heartfelt answer, or what?” she asked.

Steve wanted _Peggy’s_ answer.  Could Hayley Atwell give him that?  “Whatever… whatever you think is most in-character.”

She nodded and cleared her throat.  “Well, it would probably be something like…” and then suddenly her voice changed, dropping half a note and adopting Peggy’s more precise accent, in a way that made Steve feel as if all his insides had vanished and left him a hollow shell about to collapse in on itself.  “You self-sacrificing bloody _wanker_!  Do you have any idea how you frightened us all?”

The audience laughed again.  Steve wanted to put his face in his hands and weep.

“All you had to do was give us your position and we could have been there within hours!” Hayley went on in Peggy’s voice.  “You missed our _dance_ , Steve.  You promised!”  She stopped there, and smiled.  “And then I’m sure she’d kiss him, because she loves him no matter what a plonker he’s been.”

There was applause.  Steve shut his eyes.  Yes, he’d missed their dance.  He’d wanted to die.  He’d thought he _deserved_ to die as punishment for letting Bucky fall, so he’d said nothing and crashed somewhere in the arctic.  SHIELD had never told him exactly where.  Now here he was, in the wrong universe chasing a fugitive god and listening to what Peggy _would have said_.

He could have had that.  He could have been found and gone _home_ with Peggy and Howard and lived happily ever after instead of having to deal with _this_ and with aliens and Ultron and Infinity Stones and all the rest of it.  Maybe he would even have been able to save Bucky in that reality.  Maybe he would even have been able to save Bucky.  Maybe they would have heard about the Winter Soldier program and been able to do something about it.

“Does that answer your question, Chris?” Hayley asked.

Steve wiped his eyes on his sleeve.  “Yeah,” he said into the microphone.  “That’s perfect.”

He sat down again.  Dodger, sensing he was upset, put his head on Steve’s knee, and Steve reached to pet the dog’s neck.

There were more questions.  Steve barely heard them.  He caught the word _Roswell_ and the names of a couple of the commandos.  Somebody mentioned Maria Collins Carbonell, which Steve knew to have been Tony’s mother’s name.  He didn’t really pay attention to any of the answers but he did notice that the questions were mostly about what _might have been_.

There was a woman sitting a few seats away from him in the last row.  She moved closer and tapped Steve on the shoulder.  “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Uh.”  Steve looked at her and swallowed.  “Allergies,” he said.

She pulled a packet of Kleenex out of her purse.  “Here,” she offered.

“Thanks.”  Steve took one and blew his nose.

The Q&A session ended, mercifully, at five minutes to noon, so that everybody would have a little time to use the washroom and get to their next events.  Steve stood up as soon as the lights came on, intending to vanish into the crowd and go straight to Palomino Room D, but the people who’d been in the room gathered around him, asking for pictures and offering him things to sign.  He mumbled some apologies and said he had to go.

Before he reached the door, though, Hayley Atwell grabbed him by the arm.  “Oh, no you don’t!” she said, and pulled him in for a hug.

Steve almost froze stiff.  It took everything him to make himself hug her back rather than just standing there like a post.  Natasha had suggested he might meet Bucky here, but having to hug this woman who looked like Peggy might actually be _worse_.  If he could have _willed_ himself back to his own universe at that moment, Steve would have done it.

“It’s been ages, Chris – it’s good to see you!” Hayley said.  “What are you doing here?  Didn’t I hear you got _arrested_ the other day?”

“That was… that was a misunderstanding.”  Steve sniffled.

Hayley stepped back to look at him from arm’s length, a worried frown on her face.  “Are you all right?” she asked.

He showed her the wadded-up Kleenex.  “Allergies.”

She didn’t look like she believed him, but was distracted by Dodger, who was pawing at her for some affection.  Hayley bent down to scratch the dog’s neck, then smiled at Steve again.  “Well, now that you’re here, you have to do a Dubsmash with me,” she declared.  “Those are the rules.  In fact…” she pulled her phone out of her purse.  “I’ve even got the perfect song!  Let’s find it here.”

Steve blew his nose again.  People around them were watching with no sign of shame, and pulling out phones and cameras to take pictures.  That was no good.  The police in California were going to find out that Steve and Natasha were violating the terms of their bail and that would cost Downey money…

“Here we are!”  Peggy held up her phone and played a short music clip.

_Oh, don’t you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me, I said, ‘you’re holding back’, she said ‘shut up and dance with me’…_

“We just need to find a place to film it,” Hayley went on brightly.  “Maybe they’ll let us use the photo op stage before Tom gets started.  Jim!” she called.

The tall man, the one Steve couldn’t think of a name for, sauntered up smiling.  Whoever he was in the real world, apparently here he was Jim.  “Need me to stand there looking sad while he snogs you senseless again?” he asked.

“Oh, no, I…” Steve began.  He couldn’t _possibly_ kiss this woman while she thought he was somebody else.  That wouldn’t be right, but a voice inside him told him he was already in too deep to go back, and might as well come as close to kissing Peggy as he ever would again…

“I _knew_ it!” said Natasha’s voice.  “He’s in here!”

The crowd parted, and she came marching through.  For a moment there was murder in her eyes, but then she saw who Steve was talking to, and her face relaxed into a smile.

“Oh, Scarlett!” said Hayley.  “Do I have something of yours?”

Nat took Steve’s arm.  “Yes, you do,” she said, “and I’m afraid I need him back.”

“Very well, but I’ll want to borrow him again later,” Hayley told her.  “He owes me a Dubsmash.”      

“I won’t let him miss it,” Nat promised.  “See you later!”  With a grim like a vise, she led Steve out into the hall again.  Thor was waiting by the door, but Nat marched her prisoner right past him and into a corner where they could partially hide behind a fake potted tree.  There, she fixed him with her most penetrating glare.

“ _Really_?” she asked.

“I wasn’t going to talk to her!  She talked to _me_!” said Steve.  Which was, of course, beside the point – he shouldn’t have been in there to begin with.

“You’re lying,” said Nat.

“No, I’m not!” Steve insisted.

“Yes, you are!” she said.  “After _you_ sat there lecturing me…”

“I know!” Steve said.  “I know, but I had to see her, okay?  I just had to know what she looked like…”

“You _know_ what she looks like,” Nat told him.  “And you told me that wasn’t an excuse.”

“It’s still not,” Steve had to admit.  “I’m sorry, okay?  Believe me, I’m sorry.”  There weren’t many things he’d ever regretted more.

Thor interrupted.  “We must discuss this later,” he said.  “Right now, we have lost Downey.”

“What?” Steve and Natasha asked in unison, raising their heads.

The hallway was crowded – people were going this way and that to their panels, their activities, and their screenings, and a long lineup had formed outside Palomino Room D for photos with Tom Hiddleston.  Downey was nowhere to be seen, but he was fairly short.  Maybe he was just hiding in the crowd.  Then again, Thor was tall enough to see over almost everybody’s heads.  If Downey were there, surely he would have spotted him.

“Why did you guys leave him alone?” Steve asked, relieved that he wasn’t the only one who’d done something stupid in the last twenty minutes.

“He said he’d hold our place in line,” said Thor.

“He was surrounded by fans, we figured he’d stay there talking to them,” Nat agreed.  “He seems to enjoy the attention almost as much as Stark does.”  She glared at Steve again.  “If we hadn’t had to wander off and find _you_ …”

“Hey, you can’t blame _me_ for _him_ running off!” Steve protested.

“Excuse me!” said a new voice.

For the second time, everybody turned their heads to look.  A group of nerds had gathered around, as if the argument were just another thing to see at the convention.  The one who’d spoken was wearing a very crude Iron Man suit made out of cardboard boxes.  The others were mostly in normal clothing, but with Avengers motifs – there was a girl in red and black with a red hourglass necklace, a boy in a blue polo shirt with Steve’s shield on it, and so forth.

“Can we help you?” Thor asked them politely.

The girl in the boxes held up her phone.  “Can we get some pictures of you guys pretending to fight the Chi’Tauri over there?” she asked eagerly.

The four people they’d noticed being photographed in the main hall were now standing awkwardly by a window, while more pictures were taken.  They had clearly put great effort into their costumes, which Steve had already noticed were rather creepily realistic, but it seemed to have made them so popular they probably weren’t able to enjoy any of the events.

Steve heard a faint grow, and looked down to see Dodger baring his teeth at the quartet.  “Dodger, no,” he said quietly.

“Sure,” Nat told them, her voice pleasant even though she must have been impatient.  “Can you do us a favour in return, though?  We seem to have lost Bob.  Did any of you see where he went?”

“Bob?” asked the boy in the shield shirt.

“Robert Downey Junior,” Thor clarified.

“Oh!” said a girl in a short yellow dress and a black leather jacket.  “I got a selfie with him, but then he spotted Jennifer Connelly and they went to go have coffee or something.  He said he’d be back.”  She was hopefully clutching her own phone in its bright pink case.

Steve looked again at the people in the Chi’Tauri armor.  One of them appeared to notice him, and gathered his or her friends close to say something.

Then the lineup outside Palomino Room D suddenly burst into applause.  This announced the arrival of a very tall man with curly blond hair, wearing a black suit and tie with a green and gold scarf draped around his shoulders.  He smiled and waved to the fans as three security men around him kept anyone from getting too close.

“Pictures are going to have to wait,” Natasha told the kids.

A number of the people in the lineup had sat down to wait – now they stood again, and everyone arranged themselves into a more formal sort of order.  Many of the waiting fans were themselves dressed as Loki, both men and women, some of the latter in rather revealing interpretations of the costume.  They were all excited, some of them bouncing up and down.  A voice screamed out, “I love you, Tom!”

Loki grinned.  “Ah, my army!” he called out.  The fans squealed and cheered, and then he was gone, as the bodyguards escorted him into the photo op room.  He never seemed to have even noticed Steve, Natasha, and Thor.

“Popular, isn’t he?” asked Natasha.

“Yeah,” Steve said.  It made no sense.  Why would _Loki_ have legions of screaming fans?  He was the guy who’d brought an army of space creatures to try to conquer the world.  What about _that_ made him a rock star?  Maybe they just liked the actor.

Natasha sighed.  “Well, since _certain people_ wouldn’t let us meet him on the way in, we’ll have to do it on the way out,” she declared, glaring at Steve.  They would be standing around in this hallway for an hour and she wanted him to know it was _his fault_.

“Does that mean pictures after all?” asked the girl in the cardboard Iron Man costume.


	7. Not As It Seems

The group of would-be photographers looked so hopeful that Steve would have had a hard time saying no to them – Natasha, however, wasn’t even looking at them anymore.  Something else was happening across the hall.  The four people in the Chi’Tauri armor were heading for the door of Palomino Room D, and unlike the other fans they seemed in no mood to stand in line.  There were unhappy cries of ‘hey, don’t budge!’ and ‘wait your turn!’ as they elbowed their way to the front.

They were awfully _tall_ people, Steve realized.  He hadn’t yet seen them among a crowd, and now that he did they were _huge_ , easily approaching seven feet tall.  Were those really just costumes?  But how could they be real Chi’Tauri?  The Avengers had chased them away and despite all Stark’s doomsaying there was no sign of their return.  Besides, surely Chi’Tauri ought to be just fiction in this universe.  Creatures played by actors in costumes, or images animated on a computer…

Dodger was growling again.

“Watch where you’re going!” snapped a pigtailed girl in red polka-dots and a domino mask. She grabbed a Chi’Tauri by the arm, and the alien responded by seizing her collar and flinging her down the hallway to land on top of half a dozen other people, who’d been coming to see what was going on.  Individuals began to move away, frightened, as the four aliens – a commander and three soldiers – barged into Palomino Room D.

This was a bad situation.  Even if they weren’t real Chi’Tauri, something was definitely wrong here, and Steve couldn’t ignore that… but when he looked first at Natasha, then at Thor, he found them both hesitating.  These were immensely strong creatures from another planet, carrying technology that even Stark had trouble figuring out, while Steve and his companions were unarmed and, for the first time, only human.

The lineup broke up in confusion.  People fled, or pulled out their phones to film the incident.  Somebody had to _do_ something, and the only ones here who knew what they were really u against were Steve, Natasha, and Thor.

Steve charged in and jumped on the back of the first alien he came to, wrapping his arms around its neck to try to choke it.  Dodger ran after him and wove around the creature’s ankles, barking and nipping.  The Chi’Tauri reached back and grabbed Steve’s shirt, and dragged him over its shoulder to throw him on the ground.  Steve’s reflexes were still slow, but he managed to catch himself on his arms, and wound his legs around one of the alien’s to pull its foot out from under it.  Dodger sank his teeth into the other ankle, and the Chi’Tauri solider hit the ground, knocking over a nearby potted plant and spilling bark chips across the carpet.

Steve scooped Dodger up and pushed him off to the side, then went on to the next alien.  The first one was already getting up.  The heroes would have to get a hold of one of their weapons – there was nothing else here that could slow them down.

Inside Room D, Loki was posing in front of a white curtain with a group of women who were all dressed in versions of his Asgardian armor, varying from one that was quite accurate, to one meant to look like an evening gown, to one that was little more than dark green bikini.  He was beaming, relaxed and enjoying himself, as they draped themselves all over him.  The photographer was about to press the shutter button when the Chi’Tauri banged their way inside, with Steve in hot pursuit.  Loki looked up, and Steve saw the colour drain from his face.

The Chi’Tauri commander lowered a stafflike weapon, aiming its end at where Loki was standing.

Steve ran up and grabbed the staff, pushing it off-target, and the shot of purple energy it ejected left a burning hole in the ceiling instead.  The women in the costumes stared up at it for a moment, then grabbed their things to flee, and the whole room descended into chaos.  People were trying to hide under chairs or behind the curtains, or to make their way along the walls towards the single open door.

The Chi’Tauri commander focused its beady, silvery-yellow eyes on Steve.  Steve had the staff weapon in both hands and lifted his legs to wrap them around the shaft so it would have to take his whole weight.  He was hoping to either break the weapon or force the alien to drop it, but failed at both – it held, and the Chi’Tauri started shaking it, trying to make him let go.  Steve kicked at its fingers, and accidentally hit the firing button.  Another shot went through the wall behind the photography set.

The Palomino Room was actually one large ballroom that could be divided into eight units for smaller events, and so the ‘wall’ at the back of Room D was only a thin partition, padded for soundproofing.  The weapons fire hit at one of the seams where the panels folded for storage, and blasted it apart.  One panel fell into the room beyond, on fire, while another hung from the ceiling by one corner for a moment before coming down on top of the photography equipment.  The tripod and several of the lights fell over, and one of the bulbs burst, setting the carpet on fire as well.

“Romanov!” Steve yelled, still clinging to the staff with all four limbs.  “Thor!  Where are you guys?”

“Here!” Natasha shouted, and ran up to spray something in one of the alien soldiers’ faces.  She had found a fire extinguisher.  Stark and others had determined from the corpses left after the Battle of New York that the Chi’Tauri breathed oxygen – now Nat sprayed a cloud of cold carbon dioxide right in this one’s face.  It staggered back, choking, and Nat hit it in the chest with the canister as hard as she could, trying to destroy its biomechanics.

This seemed to do _some_ damage, since there were sparks and the canister came away with a smear of purple-black blood on it – but the alien itself wasn’t even knocked back.  It looked at Nat as if it couldn’t understand what she was trying to do, then reached out to try to grab her wrist.  She rolled out of the way just in time, then had to get up and run as the alien fired its gun-like weapon at her.  More wall panels were blown out, and folding chairs turned into half-melted wreckage.  People were screaming.  The ceiling sprinklers went off.

The Chi’Tauri commander wrenched Steve’s legs off its staff with one hand, in a motion that felt like it all but broke his ankle, and threw him across the room.  He crashed into a rack of metal chairs that had been sitting by the wall and fell to the ground in front of it.  A moment later, while he was still seeing stars, several of the chairs fell on top of him.  Steve tried to get up, but his body simply wouldn’t obey him.  All he could do was lie there feeling his head spin and bruises forming on his ribs and shoulders.

This was being normal, he reminded himself.  In the parlance of the twenty-first century, it _sucked_.

“Vermin!” shouted a commanding voice.

Steve managed to push himself up as far as his elbows to look.  In the space made by the broken partition was Thor.  He was still dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, but was now also holding an impressively large two-handed battleaxe he must have gotten from one of the weapons vendors.  His clothing notwithstanding, nobody would have mistaken him for anything but a god of thunder.

The Chi’Tauri turned to fire at him.  He bellowed a wordless war cry and charged forward, swinging the axe.  The commander raised its staff like a Japanese bo to catch the blow.

The axe broke.  Its head fell at Thor’s feet, leaving him standing there blinking at the handle in his hands.

Dodger was nosing falling chairs away from Steve now, licking at his face and hands and whimpering as if to ask whether his human were okay.  Steve struggled up to his hands and knees, with Dodger barking encouragement.

“I’m coming, buddy.  I’m coming,” Steve panted.

Natasha, with blood on her lower lip and in her hair, took his arm and helped him up.  “This is no good,” she said.  “We can’t fight them like this.”

“Oh, you noticed?” Steve grouched, but he staggered to his feet and let Nat help him towards the broken wall.  It opened onto Room B, where the cast of _Agent Carter_ had just been – they weren’t there now, thank goodness, and whoever actually _had_ was already gone.  Steve, Natasha, and Thor climbed through the gap, and Thor began trying to prop up the fallen panel to make a barricade.  Steve limped over to join him, and the strength of both together was just barely enough.

“I am beginning to have great respect for you mortals!” Thor grunted.  “It must take great courage to go about your lives knowing you may be crushed at any moment!”

“Most of us try not to think about that,” Steve replied.  His bruised ribs felt like they caught fire as he and Thor maneuvered the panel into place.  It brought back all-too-clear memories of half a dozen back-alley beatings, when he’d said something he knew full well he shouldn’t have and upset somebody bigger than he.  Who’d have ever thought he’d feel like _that_ again?

No sooner did they have their barrier in place than one of the Chi’Tauri soldiers put another energy bolt in it.  Steve and Thor threw themselves to the floor as the burning pieces went flying over their heads.

There was nothing to do now but run.

At least, Natasha and Thor ran – Steve could only do his best to follow them.  His ankle hurt and his bruised ribs made deep breathing difficult.  He hadn’t been in this kind of pain in years, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to go a little harder, run a little faster.  It was like being back in boot camp, he told himself.  He’d survived that, he could survive this.

All three of them knew they couldn’t go into the main convention hall, not when there were thousands of people in there.  Instead, they turned right and headed down a long hallway.  The convention attendees were leaving the building in droves now, flooding into the halls and pushing out the doors into the parking lot – or trying to get out of the way as shots from the Chi’Tauri weapons shattered windows and put holes in the walls.  One bolt came so close Steve felt the head on the side of his face, and his hair stirred as it went past.

He mentally took back a number of things he’d said about Tony Stark.  Right now, Steve would have _loved_ a suit of armor.

Where had Loki gone?  Had he fled with the rest of the crowd, or had he been injured or killed?  How would they get back to their own universe without him?

How could the Chi’Tauri be here in the flesh?  Steve, Natasha, Thor, and Loki were all inhabiting the bodies of their alternates, which had been inconvenient from the start and was only getting worse.  The Chi’Tauri ought to be stuntmen in makeup, or code in a computer… was it the fact that they _had_ no alternates that allowed them to come here in person?  Or maybe they had a different way to travel between dimensions.  Howard had always said that if you asked him to do the impossible he could give you three options.

The doors at the end of the hall were locked.  Thor kicked one as hard as he could and it burst open, and the three of them passed through a little carpeted foyer into a much larger room.  This was a casino, full of poker and blackjack tables and slot machines, but since it was only early afternoon there were very few people using them.  Those who were looked up in surprise as Steve, Thor, and Natasha ran in – then jumped to their feet in terror as the Chi’Tauri followed.

Steve’s eyes darted around the room, looking for something he could use as a weapon.  On one wall was a case containing firefighting equipment.  Nat had used an extinguisher with some small success… maybe they could use this.  Steve smashed the glass panel over the hose.  Like breaking the patio door at Scarlett Johansson’s house, this made an alarm go off, but Steve wasn’t nearly as worried about it this time.

“Here!”  He tossed the end of the hose to Thor.  Natasha began unwinding the rest of the spool, while Steve threw all his strength into turning on the spigot.  Dodger barked at them as if urging them to hurry.

The Chi’Tauri lined up their weapons and took aim.  One shot a bank of slot machines, apparently just for fun.  It exploded in a shower of sparks.

Water began to flow, and Thor aimed the hose at the aliens.  The spray was enough to make them stagger back, and one of them blasted a hole in the ceiling with a stray shot from its weapon.  This started another fire, and the casino’s sprinkler system also came on.

Steve would not have expected that Chi’Tauri would be afraid of water, but at that moment he couldn’t come up with any other explanation for what happened next.  The commander shouted some kind of orders, and the three soldiers stowed their weapons and hurried out of the casino, ducking to get their hulking bodies through the doors.  Steve turned off the hose again, and he, Nat, and Thor followed them.

Behind the casino were two vehicles that Steve recognized as aerial scooters, like the ones the aliens had used in New York.  Parked between a replica of the Mystery Machine from _Scooby-Doo_ and a Volkswagen painted to look like a giant Pikachu, nobody had taken much notice of them.  The four Chi’Tauri climbed on, and flew away into the sky.

On the other side of the building, fire trucks pulled up.  The parking lot was full of people who’d fled the convention centre, milling around and talking, and some of them still taking video.  A few were crying.  Nobody seemed to know what had happened.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Nat said.

That sounded like a good idea to Steve.  Getting thrown in jail _once_ per adventure was more than enough.  “Yeah.”

“Where will we go?” asked Thor.

“Don’t care,” Nat replied.  “Anywhere.”

* * *

They ended up in the Penguin Motel, which despite its impeccably-dressed mascot was a very shifty-looking place that backed onto the tracks for the city’s public railway.  The room had two double beds, a bathroom with yellowed linoleum that had not been replaced since at least the mid-nineties, and bars on the window.  Peering through the curtains at the red and white commuter trains going by, Steve supposed that since Canada _had_ tracks, _something_ had to be on the wrong side of them.

They ordered a pizza and bought a first aid kit from a nearby convenience store, and sat down to patch each other up while watching the news.

The TV showed an East Asian woman in a burgundy skirt suit standing in front of the casino as fire trucks hosed it down.  “The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo ended in chaos today,” she said, “when a skit put on by guests in costume got out of control and actual gunfire was exchanged.  Although nobody from our channel was present, we have this footage offered us by an expo attendee.”

The shot switched to shaky camera phone footage.  There was Steve, trying to get the staff weapon away from the Chi’Tauri commander by hanging off it like a sloth on a branch.  There was Nat, throwing a fire extinguisher at one of the soldiers.  There was Thor, rushing in like a berserker only to stop short when his toy battleaxe broke.  They all looked like idiots.

“Eyewitnesses insist that two of the participants in the stunt were Marvel actors Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson,” the reporter went on, “currently wanted in California for assault and battery and for violating the terms of their bail.  Anyone with information about their whereabouts is asked to please call the toll-free number below.”

The phone number appeared on the screen, below Steve and Natasha’s mug shots from the Malibu police station.  Steve’s picture was terrible – he looked like he hadn’t slept in days and resembled a homeless man more than Captain America, or even an actor who _played_ Captain America.  Natasha’s was slightly better, but it was impossible to take a bad picture of Natasha Romanov.

“Nobody recognized _me_ ,” Thor pouted.

He was sitting there while Nat sewed up a cut on the back of his elbow.  “That’s _good_ ,” she said, tying off the suture.  “That means _you’re_ not getting arrested.”  She bit through the thread and set the needle aside.  “That ought to do.  Let’s have a look at your ankle, Steve.”

Steve had already taken his shoes off, so now he removed his sock and rolled up the leg of his jeans so Natasha could look.  The ankle was definitely swollen, and there were deep scratches on the top of his foot, crusted with blood.  Dodger, sensing his human was upset, laid a head in Steve's lap for scratches, while Nat opened a bottle of peroxide.  She soaked a cotton ball and began dabbing with unnecessary ferocity.

Steve gritted his teeth.  He knew that if he complained she would call him a baby, so he was determined to remain silent – but that just made her swab _harder_ , until she hit a sore spot and he involuntarily twitched.

“So you’re still mad at me,” he observed.

“Yep,” said Nat.  She finished cleaning the claw marks and began feeling the bones to see if any were broken.  She wasn’t gentle about this, either.

“I told you I was sorry,” Steve said.

“You did,” she agreed.  “Doesn’t mean I have to stop being mad.”

Steve scowled.  She, of all people, had no excuse for holding a grudge about this.  “If anybody’s mad at anybody,” he pointed out, “it should be _me_ mad at _you_ , because you’re the one who got us arrested in California.  If you hadn’t just _had_ to see your daughter, your husband wouldn’t have thought you were having an affair, and I wouldn’t have had to punch him!”

“Well, _you_ should have learned from my bad example!” she snarled.  “But no, you went running off to moon over Hayley Atwell!  If we hadn’t had to go look for you, we’d have been at the front of the lineup to catch Loki on his way in, like we planned, before the Chi’Tauri could go for him!”

“My friends,” said Thor.  “Maybe we can resolve this after we ask ourselves why those creatures were here at all.”

Steve seized the change of subject like a lifeline.  “They’re after Loki,” he said.  “They seemed perfectly happy to stand there and let people take pictures of them until he showed up.”

“Fair enough” Nat agreed – she was just as happy to talk about something besides Steve’s bad decisions, and her own.  “Why are they after him _here_ , though?  This isn’t their universe, either.”  She started wrapping an ace bandage around Steve’s ankle.

“We assume it is not,” said Thor.  “Perhaps there are Chi’Tauri here also.”

“How can they be here _and_ be fictional?” Steve asked.  “Somebody just made them up for a movie, and yet they exist exactly the same in the real world?”

“Why not?” asked Thor.  “There are humans in both fiction and reality.”

Steve shook his head.  “They must have come from our universe, but how did they do that?  It can’t be the same way we did.”  The longer he thought about it, the surer that seemed.

“There are many roads by which a traveller may pass between facets of reality,” Thor said.  “Loki himself was a master of several.  As you say here on Earth, there is more than one way to skin a cat.”

“Everybody always says that,” Natasha remarked, “but nobody ever tells you the other way.”  Her phone began to ring, as it had several times over the course of their cross-country drive, but she ignored it.  There was nobody who would call for Scarlett Johansson that Nat wanted to talk to.  “The rune stone only transferred information, but the Chi’Tauri must have a way to transfer mass.  Maybe the reason there were only four of them is because that’s all they can do at a time.”  The ringing stopped as it went to voice mail.

“Is it wise to ignore your phone?” Thor asked.

“Probably wiser than answering it,” said Nat.

Something buzzed in Steve’s pocket, and he pulled out his own – or rather, Chris Evans’ – cell phone.  The screen was displaying a name.  “It says _Paul_ ,” he said.  There was no further information, but that rang a bell in his memory regardless.  “Downey mentioned a _Paul_ , didn’t he?”

“He did,” said Thor.  “Maybe you should answer after all.”

“No, don’t,” said Nat.  “We have enough problems, and for all we know, Downey’s helping the police look for us.”

Steve put the phone away.  It buzzed twice more before stopping, but a few seconds later, _Thor_ ’s phone started to play the _Ghostbusters_ theme.  Thor pulled it out to look.

“Paul again,” he said.  “If he is determined enough to try each of us in turn, it must be important.”  Thor put the phone to his ear.  “Hello?” he said.  “It is I, Chris Hemsworth, worthy to play the role of Thor!”  He listened for a moment, and then he smiled.  “It is the Vision!” he told the others happily, but then became serious again as he listened to what ‘Paul’ had to say.  “He says Loki wishes to meet with us, to discuss an agreement.  If we will consent to…”

“Give me the phone!” Nat ordered, and without waiting for a reaction she snatched it from Thor’s hands and spoke into it, herself.  “Paul?  It’s me!  Hi!  Sorry I didn’t answer, I’ve been very busy ignoring my husband.  What’s up?”

Thor stared at his empty fingers.  Steve had seen him and Natasha spar together – she was quick, but Thor’s Asgardian reflexes were usually quicker.  If _Steve_ felt weak and slow right now, how much worst must it be for this man who’d been ‘practically a god’ until a couple of days ago.

A moment later, Thor managed to collect himself and explain the situation to Steve.  “The Vision says that if we consent to call off Thanos’ dogs, Loki will release him, along with Downey and Jennifer Connelly, unharmed.  I was about to reply that we did not set the Chi’Tauri on him, for I would not deal with such creatures to save my own life, but Natasha took the phone from me before I could speak.”

Nat was rapping her knuckles against the headboard of the bed as she was talking – Morse code.  She was asking Paul on the phone to tell them where he was.  “Uh-huh,” she was saying.  “Uh-huh?  Yikes, that is some cray-cray right there.”

Steve sprang to his feet – or at least, he _tried_ to.  He’d already forgotten his twisted ankle, and he only just managed to catch himself on the night table before he fell on his face.  The adrenaline of fighting the aliens and then escaping the convention centre had allowed him to ignore the injury earlier, but running on it had probably damaged it further and putting weight on it now made it feel like it would explode.  He had literally _just_ been thinking about how they were all operating under unaccustomed restrictions, and it had still slipped his mind.

Thor got up and grabbed his arm to steady him, but Steve shook his head.  “I’m fine,” he said, literally lying through gritted teeth.

Thor backed off.  “Tell him we did not send the Chi’Tauri,” he said to Natasha.

She held up a hand.  “Bob said _what_?” she asked.

“Tell him, please,” Thor insisted.  “I would not have Loki believe…”

“I am _on_ the _phone_ ,” Nat said, flapping a hand at him to make him shush.  “Sorry, Paul, the Chrises are loud.  Can I talk to Tom directly, or is he… oh, I guess Loki probably doesn’t know how phones work.  Hang on to your cell, okay, I need to talk to the boys.  We’ll call you back.  Bye!”

Steve could have sworn he heard the Vision’s voice shout, _wait!  Scarlett!_ as she disconnected.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Hyatt Hotel downtown,” Nat relied.  She handed the phone back to Thor, then knelt down to tighten and pin the bandage on Steve’s ankle.  “There.  Need a cane to walk on, old man?”

Steve heaved himself up off the bed again, more carefully this time.  “Very funny,” he said.

They’d left Downey’s van at the train station, although this was less because they’d wanted to give it back to him and more because there would have been nowhere to park close to the convention centre.  When making their escape, there’d been a moment in which they’d considered taking the Pikachu car just because it was conveniently close, but fortunately they’d come to their senses, and instead they’d ‘borrowed’ a dark green Ford Edge parked in the next row.

“Romanov,” Steve said, holding the door so Dodger could hop in, “you find out which room they’re in, and cover the windows.  I’ll focus on freeing the hostages, and Thor, you subdue Loki.”  Chris Hemsworth may have been smaller than the real Thor, but Tom Hiddleston was also a little smaller than the real Loki.  Hopefully, Thor could take him.  “You’ve got the best idea how this switching universes thing works,” he added.  “Is Loki going to be able to use magic?”

“I fear I cannot say,” Thor said.  He did up his seat belt, and Nat started the engine.  “The rules of magic vary greatly between universes.  In some it is of no use at all, in others so common people use it for daily tasks as you do your mobile phones.”

They would have to be ready for anything.  “Either way, he’s not going to come quietly after all the effort he went to get here,” Steve observed – which led to one more, rather perplexing, question.  “Why _did_ Loki want to come here?  Assuming this was his goal, and not just somewhere he wound up at random.”  Loki had talked about finding a world to rule, but this didn’t seem like it.

“I don’t think it was his intention to come to this specific universe,” Thor said.  “He would not willingly lower himself to a mortal state.  Though now that he’s here, he seems happy enough to enjoy Mr. Hiddleston’s many fans.”

“But if this _wasn’t_ where he was going, then why is he still here?” asked Nat.

That was even _more_ troubling.  If Loki weren’t where he’d meant to go, why didn’t he leave?  He might be having fun getting his picture taken with girls all over him, but that was hardly on the level of ruling a planet.  What was he trying to accomplish?

Steve had hoped to reach the hotel quickly, before Loki realized that the Vision had given them the information, but between the traffic and downtown Calgary’s maze of one-way streets, it took them over an hour.  Finally, they found a place to park in the underground garage at the hotel, and headed into the lobby.  The Hyatt Regency was about as far from the Penguin Motel as it was possible to be in terms of comfort and expense, with soft lighting and a long, carpeted lobby with ultra-modern boat-shaped light fixtures on the ceilings and huge paintings of Canadian landscapes and wildlife on the walls.  The whole place smelled new and clean.

Natasha went straight to the front desk, and scooped up a ‘room rates’ brochure.  The young man behind the desk came to offer her help, and then his eyes went wide.

“Oh, my god!” he squeaked.  “Are you Scarlett Johansson?”

She laughed.  “You know what?  People ask me that _all the time_.”

The boy deflated a bit.  “Oh,” he said.  “Well, welcome to the Hyatt Regency, Miss…”

Nat ignored him.  She eyed the brochure for a moment, then held it up to show Steve and Thor.  “All right, take a guess,” she said.  “Where’s Loki?”

They looked at the page, and both read the name off in unison.  “Royal Suite.”

“Top floor,” said Nat with a nod.


	8. Stan Lee Cameo

The group’s momentum had already been dampened once, by the downtown traffic.  Now they had another enforced delay, as they stood waiting for the elevator.

“I wonder if there is a way to take souvenirs home from this universe,” Thor mused, as they watched the numbers above the elevator doors count down.

“Why?” asked Steve.  _He_ wanted to forget this place as fast as possible.  His ribs were going to hurt for days.

“Because I’m sure Jane and Darcy would very much enjoy seeing Chris Hemsworth in _Ghostbusters_ ,” Thor explained.

Nat scoffed.  “He can’t have been in _Ghostbusters_.  That movie’s probably older than he is.”

“No, there was a recent remake,” Thor said.

“Really?”  Nat looked interested now.  She liked old movies.

“Oh, yes.”

“Was it any good?”

“I don’t know,” said Thor.  “I have not had an opportunity to watch it, but I know the original is one of the films they considered essential to my education in Earth’s popular culture.”

The floor numbers reached G with a _ding_ , the elevator doors opened onto the mirrored interior, and there was Hayley Atwell.

Steve froze.  He’d assumed – indeed, he’d _hoped_ – he would never see her again.  Once had been more than enough, he didn’t think his strained emotions could take another encounter.  But there she was, as astonished to see him as he was to see her.

“Chris?” she asked.

“Uh, hello,” said Steve.

She reached for his face – it, too, had been banged up where he’d fallen on the stack of chairs, and he had a big scrape down his left cheek.  “Are you all right?” Hayley asked.  “What happened?”

Steve caught her wrist.  He couldn’t let this happen again.  He could _not_ get sucked into the fantasy, because it would only tear his heart out.  A woman who looked like Peggy reaching tenderly for his cheek was the emotional equivalent of a black hole.    “I can’t talk right now,” he said.

“Do you know the police are looking for you?” Hayley insisted.  Natasha and Thor edged into the elevator on either side of her.  Steve looked at them for help, but Nat just rolled her eyes.  She still thought Steve ought to have learned from _her_ example.

“Yes, I do,” said Steve, “but we’re kind of in the middle of something.”  He shuffled around her into the elevator.

Hayley turned around and stepped towards him, which allowed the doors to close.  The elevator started going up.  She glanced back, but then seemed to decide that wherever she’d been going, it could wait.  “Who were those people you were fighting with?” she asked.  “They were _shooting_ at you, Chris!  Actually shooting!  They said it did actual structural damage to the building.  What’s going on?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Steve said.

“Probably not,” she agreed, “but tell me anyway.”

“I _can’t_ ,” said Steve.  “I’d like to, but I can’t.”  It was a real struggle.  Peggy had never doubted anything he’d told her, and it was a heartbreak all over again to have to tell himself that Hayley would think he was insane.

They arrived at the top floor.  There were only two suites on that floor, the Royal and the Presidential.  Both had the doors closed and locked.

As usual, Natasha was on top of things – she pulled a metal pen with the Hyatt hotel logo on it out of her pocket, and took it apart to pull out a slim piece of metal.  Using that, she began to pick the lock.

“Chris,” Hayley said seriously, “if you guys are in some kind of trouble there are lots of people who can help you.  You’re only going to make it worse by doing whatever you’re doing.  I know it’s hard for you to talk to people, but I can _promise_ you that in the long run it’ll be easier than whatever this is!”

Natasha opened the door a crack and put her eye up to it to look.  Steve gave Hayley an awkward pat on the arm, and went to look for himself.

The door of the Royal Suite opened onto a short hallway with a bathroom on the left and a closet on the right.  Nobody was visible, but Steve could hear distant, tinny voices, probably from a television set.  Moving very slowly so that the hinges wouldn’t creak, Natasha opened the door and the group crept forward.  Nat herself walked as quietly as a cat.  Steve could move silently as well when he wanted, although it was difficult when he was limping on a twisted ankle.  Thor was surprisingly light on his feet, and Hayley brought up the rear, tiptoeing.  Apparently as well as Peggy’s eyes and smile, she had her counterpart’s inability to keep her nose out of things.

The little hall opened onto a large room divided into sitting and dining areas.  The former, on the left, had overstuffed couches, shiny wooden tables, and a huge wall-mounted television playing a news broadcast.  The dining area, on the right, had a big oval table with six chairs, under a chandelier that appeared to be made out of shed deer antlers.

On the largest of the sitting area’s couches were three people, arranged awkwardly with the hands behind their back and shackles on their ankles – two men and a woman.  One of the men was Downey.  The woman was the one he’d pointed out in the convention brochure: pretty and forty-ish, with long dark hair.  The other man was a very tall, thin one with blond hair and a long nose.  Silhouetted against the window as he was, Steve could almost see a resemblance between him and the Vision, though it was difficult to imagine the Vision with fair Caucasian skin instead of his normal red and green.

It was this man – he must be the _Paul_ who’d been on the phone – who looked up first.  He saw the four people in the hall and took a sudden breath in, which made Downey and the woman also look.  They made eye contact with Steve and the others, then all three shifted as best they could to look towards the dining area.  Plates and scraps on the table suggested that several people had recently eaten there, but the rest of the room was empty.

Natasha came closer to inspect their bonds.  “Where is he?” she asked softly.

“A group of fans came up to see him,” Downey whispered back.  “He wined them and dined them and now he’s taken them out on the balcony to talk.”  His eyes went to the sliding doors across from the dining table.  The curtain was partly drawn, and the sun was on the other side of the building, so no shadows were cast on it.  If voices could be heard through the glass, the television was drowning them out.  They would have no warning when Loki came back in.

“He’s gone nuts,” said the dark-haired woman, who must have been Jennifer Connelly.  “Just completely crazy.  He thinks he actually _is_ Loki and that there are aliens looking for him.”

“I fear he speaks the truth,” Thor told her.  “We are here to apprehend him and return him – and ourselves – to our own universe.”

“Oh, my god, I’m starting to believe it,” groaned Downey.  “Ten more minutes of this and I’ll believe I’m really Tony Stark and just pull an Iron Man suit out of my ass.  He can probably do that in the comics.”

Natasha reached down between Downey and Connelly and into the interior of the couch.  “It’s a sofa bed,” she said to Steve and Thor.  “Their handcuffs are wound around the struts inside.”

“If we weren’t, we’d be long gone even if we had to _hop_ ,” grumbled the blond man.  It _was_ the Vision’s voice, but with a disgust behind it that Steve had never heard the android express.

“Where did Loki get all these bonds?” asked Thor.

“From one of the girls at the convention,” said Downey.  “She asked him if he had a use for them and he said yes.  I’m gonna venture a guess that this wasn’t the use she had in mind.”

Natasha looked at the piece she’d taken out of her pen, then slipped it back in her pocket and instead snagged a small cheese knife off the dining table.  “This will do,” she announced, and knelt down in front of the sofa to start working on the handcuffs.

Steve and Thor didn’t need to be told what _their_ part in this revised plan was – without a word, they went to stand on either side of the patio doors.  When they got close enough to see around the curtains, they found Loki on the balcony talking animatedly to three young women.  The blonde was wearing a Loki costume of her own, complete with elaborate horned helmet.  The brunette was in a loose green shirt, with a blue and white bandanna tied around her head.  The redhead was in a white shirt with green raglan sleeves, with three options printed on it next to boxes as if in a survey: _single_ , _taken_ , and _burdened with glorious purpose_.  The last option had its box checked.

There was no indication when they were planning on coming back inside.  Natasha already had Connelly’s hands freed, and Hayley had helped Connelly stand so that Nat could get the men detached from the sofa before undoing everyone’s ankles.  Hopefully she could free all three before Loki realized they were there.

Of course, they couldn’t be that lucky.  While Steve watched, Loki put one arm around the costumed woman and the other around the one in the bandanna, and the one in the raglan brought up the rear as they came back indoors.  The patio door slid open.

As soon as Loki stepped inside, Steve and Thor pounced – they gabbed him by the arms and knocked him to the floor, and _that_ much went very well.  What they hadn’t counted on was the reaction of the three women, all of whom leaped to Loki’s defense as soon as they realized what was happening.  The one in the costume started hitting Steve with her sceptre, ordering him to let go.  The other two grabbed Thor by the shoulders and started trying to pull him off, the one in the raglan beating on his bicep with her fist.

In his own body in his own universe, this would have been a mere inconvenience to Steve and not even _that_ to Thor – right now it was considerably more of a problem.  The costume sceptre was made of wood and paint, but the girl kept landing blows on Steve’s already bruised ribs, and every time she did, he involuntarily twitched.  The girls attacking Thor were small and had only their bare hands, but there were two of them and they were determined, and one of them had an arm around his neck.  He was having trouble breathing.

Natasha and Hayley ran in to help.  Hayley dragged the costumed girl off Steve and held on to her, while Natasha took on both the others at the same time and had them pinned to the floor in seconds.  Steve and Thor pulled Loki to his feet, Steve rather clumsily on his bad ankle, and held him there.

_Big man in a suit of armor_ , Steve had once said to Stark.  _Take that away, what are you?_   Without the armor, Stark was no hero – but here was Steve without the serum, and he wasn’t much, either.  He couldn’t even take a teenage girl in a ridiculous costume, let alone an alien warrior!

Loki had noticed, too.  “So these are Earth’s mightiest heroes!” he sneered.  “Nearly felled by three children!”

“So this is Earth’s would-be conqueror,” Thor shot back, “basking in the adulation of those same children, hiding behind somebody else’s face!”

“I told you I would find a world to rule!” Loki replied, proud.  “This one suits me fine!  I already have followers, do I not?”  He looked at the girls – Hayley still had one, and Natasha was hanging on to the other two.  “Do I not?” he repeated.

“Yeah!” the fans chorused.

“Bettany delivered my conditions,” Loki added, “and they have not changed.  Call off the Chi’Tauri and leave me be, and these posturing thespians will come to no harm.  Persist in opposing me, and I shall turn them all into goats and have them pull my chariot!”

“The Chi’Tauri are not here of our doing,” said Thor.  “I would not set them upon my worst enemy, let alone my own brother.”

“Your brother you threw in prison without a second thought?” asked Loki.

“I swear on the ashes of our mother,” Thor said.  “I did not call upon Thanos or his creatures.”

For a moment Loki looked honestly surprised, but then he scowled.  “How would they know how to find me here, if not for you?  They ought to seek me in our world, and find another wearing my flesh.”

“Is that why you came here?” asked Steve, giving Loki a shake.  “So they’d take him and leave you?”

“Of course not!” said Loki.  “It may not look it, but this world contains all we ever wanted!  All _any_ of us ever wanted!”

“Really,” said Thor flatly.  He was not convinced.  Neither, for that matter, were Steve or Natasha.  Steve did wonder what Downey, Connolly, and Bettany might think of this statement, but didn’t dare take his eyes off Loki to find out.

“Oh, yes,” said Loki.  “Do you really need me to explain?  Look around you!  I am surrounded by people who would lay down their lives for me!  Widow,” he looked at Natasha.  “I saw all your secrets on SHIELD’s flying fortress.  You have many regrets, among them your inability to breed.  Here you are in a world where you have never killed anyone, able to have as many spawn as you like!  Captain,” he turned to Steve.  “Is that not the woman you lost to time?”  He nodded towards Hayley.  “Here she is, yours for the taking!  And you, brother.”  He locked eyes with Thor.  “You could live a lifetime with your mortal love, and not have to grieve for millennia once her brief time runs out.”

“No, I could not,” said Thor firmly.  “I have read of Natalie Portman, and I watched one of her films on the flight from Australia.  She has Jane’s face, but not her heart, and I would not be with her for her face alone.  Nor would I divide Elsa Hemsworth and her children forever from their husband and father.”

“If you take us back,” said Steve, “we’ll protect you from the Chi’Tauri.  We can do that there.”  He would probably have to make peace with Stark, which might mean apologizing for his apology letter.  Steve would just have to deal with that.  “We can’t do it here, and you know it, and Tom Hiddleston doesn’t deserve whatever it is they’d do to him if they thought he was you.”

“I am a god!” said Loki.  “If not in body, then in the minds of these young women!”  He nodded at the two Natasha was holding on to.

“Yeah!” the girls chorused again.

“You do not give me orders,” Loki went on, “and if there is a deal to be struck then _I_ shall dictate the terms!”

Thor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “You don’t know how to go back, do you?”

“Of course I do!” said Loki, affronted.  “Do you doubt my power?”

“We doubt your honesty,” said Natasha, but she wasn’t looking at Loki anymore – she was looking at something beyond him.  Steve had his back to whatever it was, and was wondering if he could risk taking a look for himself, when he heard Downey shout.

“Stan!” he said.  “Thank god – a _sane_ person!”

Then Steve did turn to look, and found that yet another individual had just entered the room.  This was an elderly man with steel-gray hair and a mustache, wearing aviator sunglasses and a green sweater over a white collared shirt.  He was staring at the three actors still partially chained to the sofa, but then followed their eyes to the small crowd gathered around Loki.  He couldn’t have any idea what he’d just walked in on, but it probably looked bad.

“Er, sorry,” the man said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the entrance to the suit.  “Wrong room.  The door was open, and I…”

“Stan!” said Connelly, “call the cops or something, they’ve all gone nuts!”

“They think they’re superheroes from another universe!” added Bettany.

“I’m worried it’s contagious!” Downey agreed.

The man named Stan blinked a couple of times, then his face lit up as if understanding had just dawned.  “Oh, I see!” he said.  “We’re doing _Visit to a Strange Planet_ , are we?”

Nobody replied, because nobody had any idea what he was talking about – except for Hayley Atwell, who said, “you mean the fanfiction?”

“Yes, exactly,” said Stan.  “Transporter accident.  Sticks Kirk, Spock, and Bones in the real world while Shatner and Nimoy and what’s-his-name are all on the _Enterprise_.”  He rubbed his hands together.  “All right, then, what’s the situation?  I’ll see what I can do.”

Steve looked at Natasha, to see if she knew what was going on.  She clearly did not.

“Loki has brought us all to this universe using a piece of forgotten technology,” Thor said.  “One that was abandoned centuries ago because it had such potential for doing evil.  Somehow the Chi’Tauri have followed him here, and he blames us for their presence.”

Stan shook his head.  “Oh, no, no, no,” he said.  “Thor wouldn’t do that.”

“That’s what _I_ told him!” Thor agreed.

“Come on, Loki!”  Stan went up and patted Loki’s cheek, like a grandfather.  “You didn’t think Thanos would fall for a little old trick like _that_ , did you?”

Loki opened his mouth as if to argue, but then he visibly wilted.  “It was not my intention to give him this actor,” he admitted.  “I had thought another of me, almost identical but not quite, would satisfy his thirst for vengeance…”

“Another of you wouldn’t have let you do this to him, and you know it,” Stan clucked.  “You brought this on yourself.  Thanos left you alone as long as you were in prison because he figured you were already suffering.  Then you escaped, and now he thinks he’s got to teach you a lesson for failing him.”

“I hardly chose to fail!” said Loki.  “It should be _them_ he wishes to punish!”  He glared first at Thor, then at Steve.

“He’ll get to them in good time,” Stan said.  “Right now it’s you he’s after, and out of everywhere on Earth you might have been, how do you think he knew you were at a convention in Canada?”

That _was_ a good question, and it was one Steve hadn’t thought of yet.  ‘The Earth’ was a lot of ground, and the Chi’Tauri and their master didn’t seem like they’d go around checking convention pamphlets to see where their target would be.  Somebody would have had to _tell_ them, and the only people Steve could think of who were in the other universe right now and had that information were…

“Our alternates?” he asked, horrified.

“Seems logical,” Stan agreed.  “Now, you have a problem, don’t you, Loki?  You owe Tom Hiddleston an apology, but you’re gonna have a hard time getting to him, seeing as there aren’t any infinity stones in this universe.”

That was something _none_ of them had been ready to hear.  Steve had assumed that finding the tesseract would be key to going back, even if they had to go to this world’s version of Asgard for it.  Loki stood there staring at Stan as if the old man had just told him the sky was orange and the grass purple, and Thor immediately protested.

“What?” the god of thunder asked.  “How can that be?  The Infinity Stones are part of the very fabric of the cosmos!  When Jane lectured at Harvard last, she used mathematics to show that there could be no universe without them!”

“Not in _your_  universe,” said Stan.  “This one’s different.  Don’t worry, you’re a smart bunch.”  He looked around at the superheroes and nodded approvingly.  “I’m sure you’ll work something else.  You’ve got Tony Stark!”  He gestured to the couch.

“No, they don’t!” protested Downey.

Stan was surprised.  “They don’t?”

“No!” said Downey.  “I’m just Robert Downey Junior!”

“Oh.”  Stan shrugged.  “Well, close enough.  Any more questions?”

Had they _asked_ him any questions?  As far as Steve could remember, this guy had just walked in and started telling them what was going on, despite having no background for it himself.  “Who are you?” Steve asked.

“I’m Stan Lee!” the man replied with a grin.  “Don’t worry about it, just trust that I know everything.  I’ll see you again, I’m sure.  Now, I have to run.  I’m having dinner with a local rodeo queen tonight.”  And with that, he turned and puttered out.

“ _Stan_!” Bettany, Connelly, and Downey all shouted in unison.

The door closed.  There was a moment of silence.

“That was weird,” said Natasha, her poker face so perfect that Steve couldn’t tell if she were trying to make a joke out of the understatement or not.

“I knew it!” said Thor.  “I _knew_ you didn’t know how to get back!”

“Oh, do shut up!” Loki groused.  “Just because we cannot return he way we came doesn’t mean we cannot return at all!  I know many roads between the worlds.”

“Then why have you not used them yet?” asked Thor.

“Because I do not _wish_ to!” Loki insisted.  “I told you, I like this world.  I was furious at first, when I realized that _your_ foolish destruction of the rune stone had shunted us all off to _this_ nowhere instead of to a universe where I am a ruler of worlds, but it improved with keeping.  I can live in peace here, surrounded by my adoring minions.”

“Ah, I see,” said Thor.  “You wish to do theatre without father telling you how un-warrior-like it is.”

Loki glared at him.  “That, too.”

“Well, you cannot still want to stay here, now that you know Thanos has already found you,” Thor pointed out.  “Do you want him to capture you in this mortal state?  Your suffering may be briefer in this body, but I think you will feel it more keenly.”

“You simply take the man at his word?” Loki asked.  “Who is this _Stan Lee_ , to tell us what the mad titan will and will not do?”

“No, no,” said Downey from the sofa.  “Stan knows.  Don’t… don’t any of you think he looks maybe a little familiar, huh?”

Steve frowned, thinking about it.  “One of the generals I shook hands with during the war kind of looked like him,” he offered.  “With the mustache and all.”

“No, no, he was one of the gentlemen from the veteran’s association, whom you brought to Stark’s party the day Ultron was created,” said Thor.

“Never mind,” said Natasha.  “The point is that we’ve got to get out of this universe, whether Loki likes it or not.  We couldn’t even handle four Chi’Tauri, we’re definitely not going to be able to stop a full invasion if it comes to that.”

“Um,” said Bettany.  “Not to _interrupt_ or anything, but can somebody please finish untying us?  It’s been hours and I’m about to wet myself.”

That wasn’t a phrase Steve would ever have expected to hear spoken in the Vision’s voice.

“Right, sorry,” said Nat.  She looked at the two young women she was still holding on to.  “Do you two promise to behave?” she asked.

“Yes,” they said.

Nat gave them a gentle shake.  “ _Promise_ ,” she said.  “Because after that conversation I think you know who you’re talking to.”  This was a warning.

“Yes, Ma’am,” they repeated, in unison.

Nat let go of them and went to retrieve the cheese knife she’d been using to open the handcuffs.  “Sorry, I’ll be quick,” she promised, and got to work on the remaining bonds.  “This is much easier when I can see what I’m doing instead of feeling around inside a sofa.”

The third girl, the one in the Loki costume, looked at her own captor in a sort of awe.  “Are you _really_ Agent Carter?” she asked eagerly.

“Oh, no,” Hayley told her.  “I’m afraid I’m just Hayley Atwell.”

“Oh,” said the girl, disappointed.  Hayley let go of her.

“Are you two oafs going to take your hands off me?” Loki asked Steve and Thor.

“We don’t trust you that much,” Steve replied.  “You’ll vanish somewhere and we’ll never find you again.”

“Actually,” Thor took a step back and held up his hands, signifying that Loki was free to go, “we observed earlier that if Loki _could_ have left this universe already, he would have.  If he could vanish, he wouldn’t need us to let go of him before he could do so.  It appears that magic, or at least Loki’s magic, does not work in this reality either.  Am I right?”

Loki glared at him.  “Fine,” he said.  “Humiliate me yet again – yes.  Thanks to _your_ clumsiness, we are _all_ stranded here with no way home, powerless against those extraterrestrial vermin.  I hope you’re proud of yourself, Thor.”

“Then we’ll just have to find a way that doesn’t rely on magic,” said Natasha practically.  “Or figure out what magic _is_ around here.  Maybe somebody who knows this universe can help.”  She undid the bonds on Bettany’s feet, and moved on to Connelly.

“Fuck that,” Bettany declared.  “It’s not going to be me.”

That wasn’t something Steve ever expected to hear the Vision say, either.

Natasha freed Connelly, too, and Bettany helped her up and swung her coat around her shoulders.

“We want no part of this,” he said.  “Let’s go home, Jen.  Go home and take a long vacation.”

“Maybe Johnny will let us borrow his island,” Connelly agreed.

“Good luck with the aliens!” Bettany added, and both of them hurried out the door.


	9. Attack by Night

With Bettany and Connelly gone, that left only Downey still handcuffed to the bed.  He looked plaintively up at Natasha.

“Are you gonna make me promise to stay before you untie me?” he asked.

Nat thought about it for a moment – or at least pretended to, in order to make him squirm.  “No,” she decided finally, and got to work on his bonds with the cheese knife.

Meanwhile, Loki and Thor were still arguing.  “Why must you ruin everything?” Loki demanded.  “Every time something is within my grasp, here comes Thor with his ridiculously costumed friends to take it away from me!”

“Maybe you should stop grasping at things that make you look like a villain!” Thor retorted.  “And I don’t need my friends, costumed or no, to thwart your silly schemes.  Darcy Lewis could do it with no weapon but a shoe!”

“Hey!” the girl in the blue bandanna barged in between the two men.  “That’s mean!”

“Yeah, why do you have to be like that?” asked the one in the costume.  “Haven’t you figured out yet that he just wants you to love him?”

“It’s not _his_ fault your father lied to him his whole life!” bandanna girl agreed.

“You’re nothing but a big bully with a hammer!” said the one in the raglan.

Loki smiled proudly, arms folded across his chest.  “You see?  These young mortals understand!  Why should _you_ have a throne, while I do not?”

“If you were _worthy_ of a throne, you would not need to seek validation from teenage girls,” said Thor.

Steve gently steered the three women out from between the arguing brothers.  “You ladies…” he began.

“Chloe,” said the one in the costume, assuming he was asking their names.

“Kayleen,” said the one in the raglan.

“Wendy,” said the one in the bandanna.

“Your name isn’t _really_ Wendy,” Chloe said.

“Yes, it is,” said Wendy.  “I had it changed.”

“ _Ladies_ ,” Steve repeated.  “I think you’d better go – this may take a while.”

“But it’s _Loki_ ,” Kayleen protested.  “All this time we thought he was just having fun in character but it’s _actually_ Loki!”

Loki was shaking a finger under Thor’s nose.  “I remind you,” he was saying, “had you not broken the rune stone before I finished programming it, we would be in a _proper_ universe right now, instead of this magic-less nowhere!”

“I remind _you_ ,” Thor said, “that if you hadn’t stolen the tesseract and run off, not only would we not have had to come after you, Thanos wouldn’t be looking for you!”

“You still broke it!  You break _everything_!” Loki said.  “Remember when Mother gave me a toy flying ship big enough to ride?  You said you would play with it for five minutes, and you crashed it into a wall!”

“We were _six_!” said Thor.  “Are you going to hold that against me the rest of our lives?”

Hayley took Kayleen’s arm.  “Chris is right,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

Steve and Hayley together escorted the young women, gently but firmly, out the door to the elevator, then returned to the hotel room to make sure the door was closed and locked behind them.  Meanwhile, Natasha finished getting Downey out of his cuffs – he thanked her, then sprinted for the exit.  Steve and Hayley moved aside to let him through, but instead of leaving the suite he dashed into the bathroom and didn’t even bother to close the door.  Steve closed it for him, and then he and Hayley found themselves standing awkwardly in the little hallway, trying not to listen to Thor and Loki arguing.

“So, ah…” Hayley looked sideways at Steve.  “You really are Steve Rogers, then?”

“Yes,” said Steve.  “Yes, I am.”

She frowned.  “Did you come to our Q&A panel just to ask me that question?”

“Yes,” Steve repeated, then realized that wasn’t true.  “No.  I wasn’t going to say anything at first, I just… I wanted to see what you looked like.”

“Surely you knew what I looked like,” said Hayley.

“Yeah,” said Steve.  “I was… I was trying to leave and then you called on me.”

“That I did,” Haylee said.  “I  probably ought to apologize.  I’m sure you were hoping the answer would be a bit more romantic than a scolding.”

“No, don’t.”  Steve shook his head.  “That was… you’re right, that’s exactly what she would have said.”  Peggy would have cried while she’d said it, too, but they would have been happy tears.  The future he could have had with her would have been full of happy moments, but he’d deliberately made sure it could never happen, because it didn’t feel right for Steve to go home and live happily ever after when Bucky was dead.  Bucky himself would have been the first person to tell Steve that was stupid.

“She never stopped thinking about you,” Hayley added.  “She always thought of you as the love of her life – everything she did, she always tried to live up to your legacy.  I know it probably doesn’t help to hear that, but the fans do love the tragedy.”

Steve wanted to think of something to say in reply, but before he could, there was the sound of a flush.  Water ran, and then Downey came out of the bathroom, zipping up his jeans.

“Okay, that’s taken care of,” he announced, not talking to anybody in particular.  “Let’s see what’s left of Loki’s dinner.”

Steve could not have imagined Tony Stark, or even anybody who _looked_ like Tony Stark, scavenging leftovers, but Downey crossed un-self-consciously to the dining table and grabbed a roll, taking a bite out of it as if it were an apple.  Then he started picking bits of crab meat out of the remains of the shells.  “Mmm… he likes good food, at least.”

Nat came over to join Steve and Hayley.  “So much for your romantic moment,” she observed.  “If this Stan Lee guy is right and magic can’t help us…” she paused a moment, thinking about that.  “Hey, Bob?  Who is Stan Lee and why does he know everything?”

Downey made some muffled noises, his mouth full of food.  “Stan Lee?  He’s the guy who wrote all the comic books they based your movies on.  Kind of the creator god of your universe.  Whatever _he_ has to say about this mess, my money’s on it being true.”  He stuffed the rest of the roll in his mouth and shook his head.  “Listen to what I’m saying!  It’s finally happened!  I’ve snapped!  Just plain lost my mind.  Somebody ask me.”  He pointed at Natasha, Steve, and Hayley.  “Any of you, I don’t care.  Ask me if I’m Tony Stark.”

Steve looked at the women.  They seemed worried.  “Are you Tony Stark?” he tried.

“No!” said Downey, and then sighed with relief.  “Okay, good, I’m not _that_ far gone yet.  Susan might still take me back.  I should write this stuff down.  The Russos… no, no,” he shook his head.  “This meta shit is more Joss’ speed.  We can get around to it when we’re done with _Avengers: the Musical_.  Oh, or better yet!  Wes Craven!”  He grinned.

Not far away, Thor and Loki’s argument was winding down but not quite over yet.  “ _If_ we can find a way to return home, I will go with you,” Loki said, “but if we are trapped, it is because of _you_.”

“We are not trapped,” said Thor.  “The universe is infinite, and all things are possible.”

“Indeed,” said Loki.  “Some things are merely very, very difficult.”

“If we cannot pass between worlds by magic, then we must seek another way,” Thor said reasonably.  “Downey, what do people in this reality know of other universes?”

Downey was stuffing more food in his mouth, including the lettuce leaves the crab claws had been sitting on.  He had to pause to chew and swallow.  “Not much,” he said.  “There are a lot of smart people who say they _exist_ but nobody tries to get there.  NASA’s probably playing with some stuff but I doubt any of it works.”

“NASA?”  Steve perked up.  “Romanov – remember when we had lunch on the film set?  Maddy told one of our co-stars that he had a call from his friend at ‘Actual NASA’.”

“That’s right,” she remembered.  “That’s an ‘in’ we could use.  Have you got his phone number?”

“I don’t know,” said Steve.  “I might.”  He took a look.  Chris and Donny were evidently at least casual friends, since Donny had invited Steve to go bowling with him.  When he flipped through his contacts, however, he couldn’t find a ‘Don’ or ‘Donny’, and he couldn’t remember the man’s last name.  Several of the contacts were identified only by nicknames.  For a moment he considered just calling them one by one and asking, but then he decided he couldn’t – they would think Chris Evans had lost his mind, and enough people seemed to think that already.

“It’s getting late anyway,” Hayley said.  “Maybe you should stay the night and figure it out in the morning.  You look like you could use a good night’s sleep.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Downey, mouth full.  “We could have dinner, too.”

Natasha frowned at him.  “You’re already eating,” he pointed out.

“This is scraps,” Downey said.  “I missed lunch!”

“We can’t just stop, not when there might be an alien invasion at any moment!” Steve protested.  He hadn’t stopped when he was in boot camp, he couldn’t do it now no matter _how_ tired he might be.  If his body were failing him he’d just have to push it harder…

He looked at Thor and Loki, and found Thor yawning.  That was right, wasn’t it?  In this universe, they were all just ordinary human beings – no powers, no enhancements.  Captain America could go a couple of days without sleep, Thor probably longer, but these actors had no such abilities.  If the four dimensional travellers were planning to return to their own bodies, they had a responsibility to keep their borrowed ones in good repair.

So they did stay for dinner.  Downey went through the room service menu and ordered them a great big pepperoni pizza and pasta carbonara, and then demonstrated how to make sandwiches out of it by layering the pasta in between the pizza slices.  It was the sort of thing Steve would ordinarily devoured, because his body demanded so many calories.  At the moment, it looked kind of disgusting.  He tried it anyway, as did Thor, while Hayley, Natasha, and Loki all stuck to the pasta and vegetables, which they ate with forks.

“Barbarians,” muttered Loki.

“I’ll give you all a ride back to Los Angeles,” Downey said, “since there’s room in the van and I’ll be going there anyway.  I’ll also warn you, if we run into Mark or Tom – the other Tom – don’t tell them _anything_.  Bruce Banner and Peter Parker can keep secrets, Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland cannot.”

“Who is Peter Parker?” asked Steve.

Downey paused in his chewing and a moment of terror crossed his face.  “Never mind.  I’ve already said too much.”

“It’s the kid in the spider costume,” said Natasha.

“See, now you’ve ruined it,” said Downey.  “What if in a future movie it’s a big plot point that Captain America finds out Spider-Man’s secret identity?  But now he already knows!”

“Then it cannot be a plot point,” Thor said reasonably.  “If our two universes are so intimately linked, then these things must have a way of allowing for themselves.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Downey.  “This isn’t the kind of thing where anybody knows how it works.  They put a lot of effort into those scripts, they don’t just write down whatever occurs to them in a dream.  They’re already writing _Thor 3_ and _Avengers 3_ , and what if the stuff you guys know when you go back changes that?  I mean, would it change the movies, or does your universe diverge from the movies there, or what?”

“Does it matter?” asked Steve, who didn’t want to think about it.  It was one of those things, like time travel, that made his brain feel weird.

“Not really,” Downey admitted, “but I’m curious.  Come on, don’t _you_ have any questions about this mess?”

Steve had one, and it popped out before he could stop himself.  “Did Stark really think the apology letter was douchey?”  It wasn’t something he could ask Stark himself, after all.

“Right now?” Downey asked, shoveling Neapolitan ice cream into his mouth.  “I’m pretty sure Tony Stark thinks you’re the douchiest douche ever to not actually be sorry.  Like Prince Geoffrey levels of douche.”

“I told you so,” said Natasha.

The next thing the party had to figure out was sleeping arrangements.  There were two bedrooms in the royal suite – a master with a king-sized bed, and a smaller room with a queen-size.  Loki announced that as the man paying for the room, or at least as the god occupying the _body_ of the man paying for the room, he was taking the big bed.  Nobody felt like arguing with him, including Thor, who simply stripped to his underwear and collapsed into the bed next to his brother, apparently asleep before he even landed.

Downey asserted that being the kidnap victim gave him a right to the other bed.  He put on a set of pajamas which belonged to Hiddleston and were therefore far too big for him, and managed to make it to the mattress before the pizza and pasta overwhelmed him in some kind of carbohydrate-induced coma.  As Natasha shut the door, Steve heard him mutter something that sounded like, “it’s okay, gonna train in the morning…”

That left Steve, Natasha, Hayley, and the sofa-bed.  Steve’s first instinct was to be chivalrous and offer to sleep on the floor, even though his sore ribs didn’t like the idea.  Fortunately, he was halfway through making the offer when Hayley shook her head.

“Don’t be silly,” she said.  “I’ve got my own room a couple of floors down.”

“You do?” asked Steve.  “Of course you do!  That’s why you were in the elevator.”  He should have realized.

“Yes, I was on my way to dinner with Dom and Jim,” she nodded.  “I suppose I should check my phone – they’re probably wondering what happened to me.  I’ll just tell them I hung out with you and Scarlett instead and blame the hotel wi-fi for not sending my texts.”

“All right,” said Steve.

There was a moment of awkward silence.  Steve wanted to ask if he would see her again, but he knew he probably wouldn’t.  She wasn’t a part of this and didn’t deserve the danger that would come with being caught up in it.  Anyway, she wasn’t Peggy, he _knew_ she wasn’t Peggy, and the fact that she could _pretend_ to be Peggy would only make it more painful.  He needed to learn from Natasha’s mistake, and avoid ruining anybody’s life while he was here, including his own.  Especially his own.

“It’s _directly_ below here, in fact,” she said.  “Before I left for dinner I could hear Tom… I could hear Loki talking to those three girls.  I thought about shouting up to him, to see if he wanted to come with us, but I decided not to.”

“Probably a good thing,” said Steve.

“Probably,” she agreed.

Again, they were both quiet for a moment.  There didn’t seem to be much to say.

“Well, goodnight, Steve,” said Hayley.

“Goodnight, Hayley,” said Steve.

She left, as of course she had to.  The door shut behind her, but in the moment before it did, Steve heard her say, “are you three _still here_?  For heaven’s sake, don’t you have homes?”

It was tempting to go look for himself, but Steve knew that was just an excuse.  Besides, Chloe, Kayleen, and Wendy might have taken it as an invitation to come back in.

Steve therefore shared the sofa-bed only with Natasha.  He climbed in with his clothes still on, since he didn’t have any pajamas and wasn’t going to sleep next to her in his underwear.  She settled down beside him and immediately rolled over, winding the covers around herself.

“If you decide to cuddle up and kiss me in the middle of the night I’ll probably kill you,” she said casually.

“Why would I do that?” asked Steve.

“Clint did it once while we were sharing a room in Dubrovnik,” Natasha said.  “He was half-asleep and thought I was Laura.  I have a bad reaction to being grabbed in the middle of the night.”

“I’ll stay on my side,” Steve promised.

This was the second time he had slept since arriving in this universe – the first had been a sequence of short, fitful naps in the back of Downey’s van on the drive to Canada.  Sleeping in an actual _bed_ , even when he only had one edge of it and no covers thanks to Nat’s cocooning, was infinitely better, especially when he was more exhausted than he’d been in years and had just eaten a very filling meal.  He nodded off quickly, and did not dream.

When he woke, it was very suddenly, to somebody giving him a shake.  “Steve!” Natasha whispered in his ear.  “ _Steve_!”

“Huh?” he asked, blinking in the darkness.  For a moment Steve didn’t know where he was, and the first place his mind went was his bedroom at Avengers HQ in upstate New York… but that couldn’t be right, because he wasn’t an Avenger anymore and he felt… weird.  It was like his brain didn’t want to get started, like the skin on his head was too tight and his eyes were sinking back into their sockets.  He hadn’t felt that way in so long that he wasn’t sure what it meant, until his thoughts finally managed to organize themselves enough to identify the sensations.  He was _half asleep_ – he had just been forcefully awakened, and some significant portion of his brain hadn’t yet gotten the message.

“Natasha?” he asked blearily.  “What is it?  What _time_ is it?”

“It’s three-thirty,” said Nat.  “There’s somebody in the hallway.”

That helped a lot.  Steve felt his heart start beating faster, and the surge of adrenaline cleared out at least some of the muddle-headedness, although his eyes still didn’t want to stay open.  “Maybe it’s just those three girls,” he said.

“It’s somebody bigger,” said Nat.

She wasn’t in the bed, Steve realized.  She was on the other side of him, standing up.  She’d already gotten up and gone to the door to listen.  He heaved himself off the sofa bed, then hissed in pain as he tried to put weight on his bad ankle.  Nat moved to help him, but he declined, not wanting to seem like a weakling.  As he limped to the door as quietly as he could, Steve couldn’t help but observe that the next time it came to a fight, he was going to be completely useless.

He was almost there when somebody knocked.  Dodger, who’d been sleeping in front of the door as if standing guard, stood up and growled.

“Down,” Steve ordered the dog, and put his eye to the peephole.

“There was nobody there when I looked,” Natasha whispered, “but I could hear them moving around.”

When Steve looked, there _was_ somebody.  It was the girl who’d called herself Wendy, still wearing the green t-shirt and blue bandanna, and with her eyes red and her cheeks damp as if she’d only just been in tears.  She lowered her head and fiddled with her cuticles for a moment, then looked back over her shoulder as a rasping voice said something Steve couldn’t quite make out.  Wendy swallowed hard, and then raised a hand and knocked again.

“Mr. Loki!” she called out.  “Are you in there?  There’s… there’s somebody who needs to talk to you!  Please answer!”

“She’s lying,” said Nat.  “Something’s wrong.”

“Obviously,” said Steve – he wasn’t _that_ sleepy.  He didn’t know who might be waiting out there, just out of sight, but he had a very bad feeling about it, and as he’d already noted, he was in no shape to fight.  “Wake the others,” he told Nat.

She slipped soundlessly away to do so, while Steve looked around the room for a weapon – or better yet, for a chance of escape.  Nothing looked promising as either.  Other than the door, the only way out of the hotel room was the balcony window.  Steve limped out onto that, and looked down.  The hotel was at least twenty storeys, placing the street some two hundred feet below.  Steve could have fallen that far and lived in his own reality, but not in this one, and he couldn’t imagine climbing down the outside of the building on his bad ankle.

There might be an easier way, though.  When Steve and Bucky had been kids, they’d once tried tying the sheets together to climb down from the window of Steve’s room, just to see if they could do it.  It turned out that they could, although not very gracefully, and Steve’s mother had been very upset about how they’d stretched out the fabric in the process.  The hotel probably saw worse things happen to their sheets, and in the absence of other realistic options it was going to have to do.  Steve went back to the sofa bed and started tying knots.

“Again?” he heard Downey say.  “We’re running off in the middle of the night _again_?  What is _with_ you two?”

There was a third, even more urgent knock at the door.  “Mr. Loki, _please_!” begged Wendy.  “They say they’re going to kill me!”

That seemed to wake Downey up properly.  “What’s going on?” he asked.

“We don’t know, but we don’t like it,” said Natasha.  She took in what Steve was doing, and apparently considered it good enough.  “Help Steve with the sheets.”  She went to get Loki and Thor.

Downey rubbed his eyes.  “Are we seriously climbing out the window?” he asked.

“You want to check what’s outside the door?” Steve said.

Downey went and put his eye to the peephole, then jumped back with a startled cry.  “There’s… holy shit, there’s a great big guy out there with, like, a skull for a face!”

The description was like a splash of cold water, both waking Steve up and intensifying his headache as he realized the situation was even worse than they’d thought.  The Chi’Tauri must have found Loki’s fans somehow, and had forced them to tell where he was.  “Get more sheets!” he ordered.

“We won’t have enough to go all the way down!” Downey protested.

“We’ll have enough to go _part_ of the way down,” Steve said.

Downey ran back to the second bedroom.  Steve took the ones he’d already knotted together and tied them to the balcony railing, using a British navy knot Monty had taught him.  He gave it a good tug to make sure it was tight, then grabbed another sheet from the pile Downey had brought him.

Natasha emerged from the other room dragging Thor and Loki, the former in his underwear and the latter in green silk pajamas.  Loki looked eager to leave, Thor rather less so.

“I do not like running away,” he protested, as Natasha urged him out the balcony door.

“I don’t like being completely outclassed and getting killed a parallel universe away from home,” she replied.  “Steve, how long is your rope there?”

“We can make it two, maybe three storeys,” said Steve.  That should be all they needed… but it was probably better to be safe.  “Can you get the sheets from Loki’s room?”

She would have done it, but it was too late.  There was an explosion, and the door of the royal suite was blasted off its hinges, spraying fragments of burning wood into the room.  Steve dropped the line of sheets, and Natasha swung herself over the edge to shimmy down it.  Downey went next, with surprising agility, and then Loki, while Steve and Thor remained to face whoever or whatever was about to walk in.

The smoke cleared, and in strode one of the Chi’Tauri.  It had a bruise on its chest, Steve noticed, right in the area of its visible biomechanics – this must be the individual Natasha had hit with the fire extinguisher.  It was holding its plasma rifle in one hand, and in the other was carrying the sobbing Wendy by the back of her shirt, as if she were a misbehaving puppy.  Steve tried to calculate the odds of rescuing her successfully, and realized they were basically nonexistent… but he couldn’t leave her to be killed!

Dodger dashed back into the room and began barking at the alien.

“Dodger!” Steve shouted.  “Come here!  _Bad dog_!”

The Chi’Tauri dropped Wendy, who crawled into the bathroom and locked the door.  It raised its plasma rifle to take aim at the dog, and Dodger realized he was in danger – his ears and tail drooped, and then he turned around and ran back for the humans.  Steve gathered him up and handed him to Thor, who vaulted over the edge to climb down with one hand.  Steve himself followed.

Even with knots in the sheets to cling to, climbing with a twisted ankle was very difficult.  Steve had to support his entire weight with his arms and he could do it, but it was far more difficult than usual.  He was only a yard or so down when a bolt of purple energy flew by over his head, vaporizing part of the railing and taking the knot in the sheets with it.  The severed end of the cloth was on fire as Steve began to fall.


	10. Courage and Accord

For a split second that stretched into an eternity, Steve was dangling helplessly in space.  Then Thor tossed Dodger to Natasha and grabbed the railing of the balcony below, while Loki and Downey, on the second storey down, caught the other end of the line of sheets.  Steve stopped with a jerks that felt like it would pull his shoulders out of their sockets, and then he was just dangling there, a hundred feet above the ground.

 _Don’t look down_ , he told himself.  Heights didn’t usually bother Steve – but then, he could usually count on surviving his encounter with the ground.  If he fell _now_ , his odds were not that good.

He looked anyway, and wished he hadn’t.  Beneath his feet he could see the orange glow of the sodium vapor street lamps, and the lights on a train pulling into the station, all of it impossibly tiny and far away.  The sight made him feel ill.  There’d been a time, back when he was a sick little kid in Brooklyn, when Steve Rogers would have given anything to be _normal_.  Now, however, _normal_ simply wasn’t good enough.

Thor let himself down onto the second balcony, and helped the others pull Steve up.  Steve somersaulted awkwardly onto the rail and spilled onto the concrete in a boneless heap, his head still spinning from the height.  It took him a moment to catch his breath.

“You okay?”  Natasha helped him to his feet.

“Stop asking me that,” said Steve, a little more harshly than he meant to.  He was _not_ okay, and he hated that it was so obvious.  “I’m fine.”  He wobbled on his feet, then got his balance and banged on the glass doors.

“Peggy!” he shouted, then caught himself and cursed under his breath.  “I mean, Hayley!  Are you in there?”  What if this were the wrong room?

The exterior light came on, the curtains rolled back, and Hayley opened the balcony doors.  She was dressed in a navy blue camisole and a pair of pajama pants with a tropical flower pattern on them, and squinting in the sudden illumination.  She had no makeup on and her hair was a mess, and she was the most beautiful thing Steve had ever seen.  Peggy would never have let him see her like that…

“Chris?” she asked.  “I mean… I don’t know what I mean.  Now what?  Did you… did you climb down the building?”

Steve pointed up.  “Chi’Tauri,” he said.  “In our hotel room.”

Hayley frowned.  “Those people from the convention?”

“Yes!” he said.  “But they’re the real thing.  Like Stan Lee said, they’re looking for Loki.  They found his three fans and made them tell where he was.  We have to get out of the building.”

“Can I get dressed?” Hayley asked.

There was a creak of distressed metal above them.  Thor leaned over the edge to look up.

“They are trying to climb down after us,” he said.

“No time to dress,” Steve told Hayley.

He limped after as everybody else hurried out into the hallway.  Hayley hit the elevator button, and luckily there was already a car on their floor.  The doors slid open, and they piled inside.  Steve was not wearing a watch and had no reference for how long this was all taking, but it felt painfully slow.  The doors slid shut, and the machinery rumbled as they began to descend.

Steve probably should have felt relieved, but he was mostly just annoyed and tired.  His head hurt from being awakened in the middle of the night, Dodger’s barking only made it worse, and his ankle was on fire from being walked on just as it had started trying to heal.  All he really _wanted_ to do was curl up right there on the floor of the elevator and sleep for a week, but a moment later he was shocked back to full wakefulness, as something heavy landed on top of the elevator car.

Everybody looked up.  Hayley grabbed Thor’s arm.

Steve internally cursed the situation all over again.  He _knew_ he couldn’t fight the Chi’Tauri – he was exhausted and his ankle was throbbing and the hulking extraterrestrials would just tear him limb from limb and then go after the others.  He was about to hammer on the elevator buttons, as if that would help them reach the ground faster, but then he noticed the red emergency stopped.  Steve pressed that, instead, and the elevator halted with a _thunk_.

“What are you doing?” Loki demanded.

Something rattled in the ceiling, and there was a loud _bang_ as an access hatch opened.  Hayley let out a short, sharp cry of alarm, then clapped both hands over her own mouth as a huge, muscular, six-fingered hand reached in and groped around.  Everybody ducked, and Steve caught sight of glowing eyes in the darkness above the hatch – but the Chi’Tauri was far too big to get through.  That would buy them some time.

Natasha was already pressing the _door open_ button, but it wasn’t working.  Steve forced his fingers into the gap between the elevator doors.

“Somebody help me!” he ordered.

Thor joined him, and so did Downey – Hayley and Natasha would have done the same, but there wasn’t enough room.  The men wrenched the inner doors open, and found the outer one.  The car had stopped between floors, and the top of the door was at knee-height.  Thor and Steve got down on the floor, and the two of them managed to open the outer door just far enough for Nat to wiggle through.  Steve heard her land on the carpet outside.

“You!” she shouted.

“Me?” asked a startled male voice.

“You’re the only one here,” said Nat.  “Help me with this door!”

A teenage bellboy with dark curly hair joined her in forcing the outer door open.

“Are you Scarlett Johansson?” he asked through his teeth as they struggled with it.

“People ask me that all the time!” said Nat.

They dragged Hayley through second, then Downey, since they were smaller.  The doors had to open a little wider in order to admit Steve, Thor, and Loki.  Loki, as the thinnest of the remaining three, crawled out first.  Steve went second, and then he heard an explosion.

He was still in the process of turning around to help Thor when the elevator car lurched downward, smoke and sparks billowing out.  The Chi’Tauri’s hands, fishbelly-white with four fingers and two thumbs on each, grabbed the doors and shoved them open the rest of the way.  Machinery wailed in protest.

Up and down the hallway, hotel guests awakened by the noise were opening the doors of their rooms to find out what was going on.  Most of them shut them again immediately.

“Coming through!” shouted Natasha.

Steve, Downey, and Loki got out of the way as Nat, Hayley, and the bellboy charged at the elevator doors, pushing a luggage cart laden with somebody’s impressive collection of Louis Vuitton bags.  With three people behind it, the impact was enough to knock the startled Chi’Tauri backwards, and the elevator car it was standing in dropped another three or four feet.  Ripping part of the roof off to get in had managed the cable and activated the emergency brake, but the combined load of Thor, the luggage, and the enormous alien was right at the elevator’s weight limit.

Bags wouldn’t keep a Chi’Tauri down for long, no matter how heavy they were.  The group picked themselves up and fled.  The bellboy dashed into a side hallway and slammed the door, while the rest of them found a stairwell and started down.

Except that Steve couldn’t run.  Putting weight on his injured ankle was only making it worse and worse.  It was about to fall out from under him, and the only member of the group who might have been able to carry him in their current condition was Thor, who was still trapped in the elevator.  Steve made it a few steps, then his leg simply folded up, and he tumbled down a dozen concrete steps to end in a dazed heap on the landing below.

Hayley and Loki helped him up, and let him lean on them as they kept going.

At the next floor down they were relieved to find Thor, climbing out of the elevator with the help of two laundry ladies.  He was in bad shape, peppered with bruises and cuts from the debris of the explosion, coughing from a lungful of smoke, and with his hair singed.  He was alive, though, and his worst injury was a wide, raw scrape across the back of his right shoulder, which was oozing blood in several places.

“You two,” Nat said to the laundry ladies.  “There must be another elevator for the staff.  Where is it?”

The younger one, who was not much older than the teenage bellboy from the floor above, gestured for them to follow.  “This way!” she said.

She showed them into a side hallway where the soda and ice machines were, and there they found a larger elevator with a housekeeping cart waiting outside it.  The cart was empty, its trash bin and laundry bag having both been taken away, and it offered a solution to what was currently slowing them down.  Without having to be told, Steve climbed into it.  The others pushed him into the elevator and once again Steve hit the button for the ground floor.

“What’s going…” the older laundry lady began to ask, but then there was a crash, and the sprinkler system went off.

“Get somewhere safe and lock the door!” Steve ordered them.  The elevator doors slid shut behind them.

They were only after Loki, Steve reminded himself as they descended.  The Chi’Tauri at the convention centre had left off defending themselves from three people they knew to be enemies because they’d realized they’d lost Loki, and fighting anyone else was a waste of their time.  They wouldn’t hurt the hotel employees, and had probably just left Wendy crying in the bathroom.

Probably.

Another explosion rattled the building.

After what seemed like an eternity, the elevator came to a stop on the ground floor.  Steve could hear sirens outside, but they ignored those and took a back hallway to the parking garage, laundry cart and all.  There was a short flight of stairs that they just let the cart bump painfully down, and Hayley threw herself at the emergency exit door at the bottom.  An alarm began to blare.

“I don’t have my keys!” Downey realized.  “I can’t get into the van!”

By the time he’d finished saying that, Natasha had already picked the lock on the vehicle’s door, and she got it started while the others climbed in.  They roared out of the underground parking, crashed right through the gate, and kept going.

“They’ve probably got a camera on that thing,” Downey observed morosely.  “I don’t _wanna_ go back to jail.”

“Where are we going?” Hayley asked.

That was the moment when Steve really _understood_ that she was still with them, and that she was probably going to be stuck with them for the foreseeable future.  That was his fault.  He’d just _had_ to go into the Q&A panel, which had given Downey the chance to sneak off, which had led to them being in the hotel in time to meet her again, and now here they were.  Hayley Atwell was _not_ Peggy Carter.  She hadn’t signed up for this, she didn’t have the skills or experience to deal with what might happen on this awful little adventure, and Steve’s injury meant he was in no position to protect her if it all went wrong.  Natasha may have ruined Scarlett Johansson’s marriage, but Steve might yet get Hayley Atwell _killed_.

“I don’t know,” said Downey.  “Where _are_ we going, in my van, which we stole even though I’m now driving it, in our pajamas, in the middle of the night?”

“Back to Los Angeles,” said Nat.  “We have to find Donny.  He can contact his friend Kevin at NASA, and they might be able to help us get back to our own universe.”

“Okay.  Do the _aliens_ know that’s where we’re going?” was Downey’s next question.

“They shouldn’t,” Nat assured him.  “Not unless somebody mentioned it in front of those three fans.”

“Then they don’t,” Steve said.  “They left before we got to that.  We didn’t start talking about it until Bob was done in the washroom.”

“Um…”  Hayley swallowed.  “Actually… I _might_ have told them.”

Several heads turned in her direction.  “What?” asked Steve.

“ _Why_?” asked Loki.

“They wanted to know if you’d be at the convention again tomorrow!” said Hayley.  “I said no, because you were going to NASA so somebody there could send you back to Asgard!  I just wanted them to go home,” she added.  “I didn’t know!”

Loki glared at Thor.  “Think what a pickle I’d be in if you lot hadn’t showed up to _rescue_ me,” he said sourly.

“We’ll have none of that,” Thor told him.  “Had we not come for you, you would at this very moment be in Thanos’ hands.”

“Don’t you two even start!” said Natasha.  “If I have to listen to you bickering all the way back to California I am throwing you both out the window!”

“I was not bickering, I was merely stating a fact,” said Loki.

Steve was sitting in the wrong place to see what sort of look Natasha gave him, but Loki did stop talking, and that was what mattered.

“So _are_ we still going to California?” asked Hayley.  “Or is that plan off the table?”

“I think we have to try,” said Steve.  Nobody had any better ideas, but this one really didn’t look very good.  The Chi’Tauri would almost certainly be there ahead of them… and then what?  Would they lie in wait for Loki, or simply tear the place apart when they found he wasn’t there?

“I have definitely lost my mind,” Downey remarked yet again.  He programmed the destination into his GPS.

“I don’t think there’s more than four of them, at least,” said Steve.  They needed _some_ good news, and that was the closest thing he could think of.  “The one that first broke into the room was the same one Natasha smacked with the fire extinguisher.  It had a bruise on its chest.”

“So we know the number of our enemy,” Thor said.

“And we might know something about how they got here,” Natasha put in.  “After the last time they fought on Earth you’d think they’d want to send as big a force as they could.  If there’s only four, maybe that’s all they _could_ send.  That means they can’t call for reinforcements.”

“They hardly need them,” groused Loki.  “All we’re doing is running away.”

Thor opened his mouth to say something, but caught Natasha’s eye and changed his mind.

* * *

 Before setting out on the full twenty-four hour drive back to Los Angeles, they had to stop for supplies.  At seven AM a Wal-Mart opened, and they were able to run in for coffee, breakfast, and more first aid supplies.  It was Natasha and Hayley who did the actual running, since they were the closest to being properly dressed – Nat was still in the t-shirt and leggings she’d bought at the airport, while Hayley was obviously in her pajamas but made it a little more modest by pulling Downey’s cardigan on over her camisole.  Loki, also in pajamas, Downey, in Loki’s spare pajamas, and Thor, wearing nothing but one sock and a pair of briefs, waited in the van with Steve.

It took the women about half an hour before they returned, now fully dressed in t-shirts, jeans, sneakers, and sunglasses.  Natasha had a McDonald’s bag in one hand and a tray of drinks in the other, while Hayley was carrying several plastic shopping bags.

“We left without our wallets,” Steve said, as they climbed back in.  “How did you pay for all that?”  He braced himself for Natasha to say they’d stolen it.

“I memorized Bob’s MasterCard number when we stopped for gas the other day,” Nat replied.

“You did _what_?” asked Downey.

“Eat your breakfast.”  Natasha handed him the food.  “You paid for it.”

In the bags Hayley was carrying were clean clothes for everybody, in pretty close to the right sizes – Steve knew he could probably thank Natasha for that, too.  There was also another first aid kit, bottled water and sandwiches for the road, and a few other miscellaneous things.  One of the latter was a brace, to give Steve’s ankle some better support than the bandages they’d been using so far.

Steve managed not to actually whimper as Nat pushed the brace over his swollen foot, but he held on tight to the headrest on the van seat and he could feel sweat rolling down the side of his face.  It was a long way from the worst pain he’d ever felt – nothing beat breaking a rib from whooping cough – but it was the worst he could remember feeling in years.  Steve had spent some time in the hospital after crashing three helicarriers into the Potomac, and the doctors had expected him to need months of physical therapy.  He’d been back on his feet by the end of the week.  Now here he was, laid up for the foreseeable future with a _sprained ankle_.

“If you want to say ow, say _ow_ ,” said Natasha.  “Nobody is going to think any less of you.”

“I’m fine,” Steve grunted.  “I’m just annoyed that I was stupid enough to get hurt in the first place.”

He was annoyed about a couple of other things, too.  He was still angry with himself for giving in to the temptation of the Q&A panel, starting the chain of events that had led to Hayley being here.  He was _definitely_ angry with Loki for getting them all into this situation, and angry that he couldn’t have done anything to save anybody during the attack on the hotel.  The thing he was angriest about, though, was… well, no, he wasn’t exactly _angry;_ about it.  He was more _confused_ , and deeply troubled by the implications, and _potentially_ angry, if any of those implications bore out.

Why hadn’t he tried to save Wendy?

It was true that Steve’s injury would have kept him from running, and he already knew he couldn’t fight the Chi’Tauri hand-to-hand in this universe even when he was perfectly fit… but that skinny boy from Brooklyn who’d been so desperate to join the army, _he_ would have done it.  He would have known he would fail, that he would probably be killed and Wendy with him, but he would have done it anyway, for the same reason he’d once jumped on a grenade – because it was the _right thing to do_.

What had changed?  Could it be that after several years in which courage was easy because Steve knew he was more or less indestructible, he’d forgotten how to be brave?  Could he really have decided to just leave that girl to die, because saving her would have _hurt_?

“There we go!” said Natasha.  “Nice and snug.”

Steve realized he’d tensed his shoulders and gritted his teeth, and made a conscious effort to relax both.  _Nice and snug_ was an understatement.  He felt like his toes were about to turn purple from lack of circulation.

“Thor,” said Natasha, “you’re next.  Let’s have a look at your back.”

Thor pulled off the t-shirt he’d only just put on, and turned to the side so Nat could see.  His injuries weren’t deep but they were covered in scabs, and Steve knew from experience that shallow scrapes to the skin, where all the nerve endings were, could be far more painful than they had any right to be.  Nat tore open a package of alcohol wipes, and started swabbing.

Steve had managed to keep quiet as Natasha put the brace on him, but Thor did make a soft hissing sound as she touched him.  “I am unused to such pain from so small a hurt,” he confessed.  “I wonder if this is why mortals do not live long.  Any injury causes them such stress that their lives are cut short.”

Loki was watching with what appeared to be grudging admiration.  “You bear it better than I expected,” he murmured, low enough that Steve suspected nobody but Thor had been meant to hear it.

“It is unseemly for a warrior to complain,” Thor said.  “I shall have to take better care, though.  Little as I like to flee from battle, I did promise Elsa that I would return her husband to her fit and well.”

Maybe _that_ was it, Steve thought.  Maybe the reason he hadn’t gone to save Wendy was because he knew this wasn’t his body.  Evans was probably going to be upset enough about the sprained ankle and the criminal record.  Steve couldn’t get him killed on top of everything else.  That seemed like a pretty compelling argument, and yet it hadn’t been what was on Steve’s mind as he’d watched the alien drag Wendy into the hotel room.  What he’d been thinking then was that he _couldn’t_ save her.  If he tried, he would lose.  That was true, but it was most definitely not the point.

Along with the rest of their purchases, Natasha and Hayley had bought a copy of that day’s _Calgary Sun_ , a newspaper that looked to be on about the same level of journalism as New York’s _Daily Bugle_.  The events at the convention had made the front page, with a blurry photograph of the fight and the headline _Out of Control_.  Below that was a quote from one of the convention organizers: _this is why the Marvel universe has Accords_.

The actual article began on page two and everything it said made Steve winced in guilt.  People were speculating that it was a terrorist attack – the rest of the convention had been cancelled and all the guests sent home for their own safety.  Half a dozen other events that were supposed to use the damaged space had to be rescheduled or moved.  Repairing the damage was going to cost millions and several people who’d been injured were already threatening lawsuits.

A few pages further in was an article about the events in the hotel.  Nobody seemed sure what had happened there, either.  Steve was relieved to see a note that a young woman had been found alive in the bathroom of the royal suite, but again there’d been extensive damage and many, many injuries.  Reading it made him feel so powerless.  As Loki had said, they couldn’t do anything but run away.

Once they were all dressed, patched up as best they could be under the circumstances, and had eaten, they got back on the road.  Within half an hour they were out of the city, heading south through rolling fields of yellow canola, or green pasture with cows and horses grazing.  Downey needed a nap, so Hayley took over driving.  Thor and Loki were in the back set of seats, Loki glaring out the window at the world going by and Thor sitting awkwardly sideways so his scraped back wouldn’t rest against the seat.  That left Steve and Nat in the middle set of seats, with the newspaper lying in between them.  Steve tried not to keep looking at it, but he couldn’t help it, and every time he did, he had to shut his eyes to make himself stop.  There’d been _nothing_ he could do.

“They’re right, you know,” said Natasha.  “That’s why the Accords exist.”

Steve opened his eyes again and turned his head to look at her.  “Really?” he asked.  “You want to talk about that _now_?”

“Not really,” said Natasha, “but there it is.”

“If we hadn’t been there, they would have taken Loki and _none_ of us would stand a chance of getting home,” Steve pointed out.

“I know,” said Nat.  “Innocent people still got hurt, and they didn’t need to.  We’re not very subtle, Rogers.”

Downey lifted the newspaper he’d been using as a sun shade.  “You guys wanna hear something funny?” he asked.

“Nothing about this is funny!” Steve protested.

“I want to hear it,” said Nat.

“Chris was totally Team Iron Man,” said Downey.  “We can probably find you the interviews on YouTube.  He said if there were real Avengers, he would want them to have oversight rather than just letting a group of vigilantes answer to nobody but themselves.”  He chuckled – apparently he really _did_ find it funny.  “Nerdist dot com called him a traitor!”

It took Steve a moment to remember that _Chris_ was Chris Evans, the actor who played him in those movies and the man whose body he was currently borrowing.  The one he’d sort of hoped would try to live up to the ideals of Captain America, even if he couldn’t do so in the way Steve himself had.  _He_ agreed with _Stark_?

“What about you?” Steve asked.  Maybe if the actor who played Captain America was really on Stark’s side, the one who played Iron Man would be on Steve’s.

“I always thought watching the fans freak out was way more fun than explicitly choosing a side in a fictional argument,” said Downey.  “I gotta say, though, the guy in the room in _Civil War_ who was making sense was Rhodey.  To think _you_ always know what’s best for the world is arrogant and dangerous.  Somebody’s gotta be able to step in and say yes or no.”

“The problem is,” Natasha said loudly, “that this is a philosophical argument, and the thing with philosophical arguments is that there’s no one right answer.”

“That’s not what you were saying a minute ago,” said Steve.

“That’s _exactly_ what I’ve been saying the whole time!” said Natasha.  “The Accords aren’t a perfect solution because there _are_ no perfect solutions in an imperfect world, but they’re an _attempt_ , and since they exist we have to go either around or through them in order to get anything done.”

“You know where that got us?” Steve asked.  “That got us _here_.”

“That was the great thing about the movie, actually,” said Downey, “was that you could see both sides.  Tony’s got a point about regulation being needed, but Steve’s also got one about how it can keep them from helping people who need help.  And people can discuss it all they want because it’s not getting in anybody’s way in the real world… until now, of course,” he added.

“Well, maybe now some people will change their minds,” said Steve.  He wondered… if Evans were, right now, in Steve’s body and in the hands of the Chi’Tauri, how did _that_ make him feel about the Sokovia Accords?  Or was he even thinking about them?  Would Steve ever get a chance to ask?  Probably not, due to the nature of exactly _how_ they’d passed between universes.  But if he did ever meet Chris Evans, he would definitely have some questions for him.


	11. Unwelcome Back

Steve quickly began to realize that the drive back to Los Angeles – and probably the one from there to Houston afterwards, too – was going to be a very long one.  Downey seemed to love talking about Tony Stark almost as much as Stark himself did.

“The thing about Tony’s character arc,” he said, through a mouthful of sour cherry candy, “is that it’s always about responsibility.  That’s carried through all of his movies.  In _Iron Man 1_ , he’s in that cave in Afghanistan because he wasn’t paying attention to what his company was doing, he was busy partying and wasn’t taking responsibility for what he helped create.  So he decides that’s going to be his mission, to take back that responsibility.  And at the end, he outs himself.  He doesn’t want a secret identity, because he _wants_ to have that check on his behaviour that comes with people knowing who he is.  If he misuses his power as Iron Man, it needs to come back and bite him.”

“Uh-huh,” said Steve.  He’d seen video of that press conference.  No matter what Downey said, it sure looked to _Steve_ as if Stark just wanted the credit for being a hero.

“ _Iron Man 2_ ,” Downey went on.  “He won’t give up the suit when the government demands it, because he doesn’t want that kind of power in the hands of people who _aren’t_ accountable.  At the end, Justin Hammer is held accountable for what _he’s_ done.  He doesn’t get killed, Pepper has him arrested.  Then in _Avengers_ , Tony’s out to expose SHIELD’s dirty laundry, because here’s more people who have a lot of power and aren’t accountable for how they use it.  Case in point, they think they can nuke New York and get away with it.”

“That was the security council, not SHIELD,” said Steve.  “You know, the exact same people who would have control of the Avengers under the Sokovia Accords.”  Surely _anybody_ could see the hypocrisy there.

But Downey had built up a head of steam and wasn’t going to let Steve stop him now.  “ _Iron Man 3_ ,” he said.  “Tony blew off Killian at a party thirteen years ago, and the guy went all Syndrome from _The Incredibles_ and grew up to be a supervillain.  So Tony has to take responsibility for that _and_ for his own mental health issues, which he’s been neglecting.  And _Age of Ultron_ is all _about_ Tony taking responsibility for something he helped to create.  It’s practically a metaphorical retelling of _Iron Man 1_ , with Ultron standing in for Obadiah as the monster Tony irresponsibly built!  Tony is all over responsibility, and as a fundamentally irresponsible person, I appreciate…”

“Is it _responsible_ to let innocent people die when you could have saved them?” Steve interrupted.  Downey was talking about this as if it were some kind of literature analysis.  Didn’t he realize by now that Steve came from a real world, with real people’s lives on the line?

“No,” said Downey, “but neither is destroying a building to get at the one bad guy in the middle of it.  Tony doesn’t think the accords are perfect, but they’re a step in the direction of finding a compromise.  Like Scarlett said, there are no perfect solutions in an imperfect world.”

“Exactly!” Natasha agreed.  “It’s not as black and white as you think of it, Steve.  It’s always more complicated.”

“As long as we’re talking about it,” Downey said, “I gotta ask.  Thor!  Whose side would you have taken?  I’ve been wondering.”

“Not knowing all the details of the conflict, it is difficult to say,” said Thor.  “As I said last night, I do not like being unable to help people in need, but nor do I wish for those who are _not_ in need to suffer.  And one cannot go to war without a formal declaration,” he added.  “A lesson I learned at great cost.”

“Bruce would have been Team Cap,” said Downey, “but that’s mostly because he hates Ross.”

“Nice to know _somebody’s_ on my side,” grumbled Steve.  He looked up, and caught Hayley’s eye in the mirror again.  “What about you?” he asked.  He had to admit, if there were a good example here of poor decisions putting the innocent in danger, it was Hayley’s presence.  She was stuck with them because Steve had taken something into his own hands when he shouldn’t have.

“What about _me_?” she said, an eyebrow raised.  “Or what about _Agent Carter_?”

“Both,” said Steve.  That doubled the chances of her agreeing with him.

“Peggy thinks it’s pointless to argue with Steve Rogers no matter your opinion,” she said, “because he’s a stubborn plonker and you’ll never change his mind.  I imagine she said so to her superiors on many, many occasions.  And Hayley thinks you should both be quiet and let her drive, because she is far too tired to do so while distracted.”

She didn’t want to give him an answer… that meant she, too, though he was wrong.  “Fine,” grumbled Steve.

“Don’t sulk,” Natasha told him.  “It’s my fault for bringing it up.  We’re all way to strung out to talk about things like this.  I’m not surprised that Bob is Stark’s most ardent defender, though.”  She smiled.  “If you’re going to be an actor you have to understand exactly what your character is thinking.  That’s why you’re so bad at it,” she said, giving Steve a gentle poke.

He wasn’t in the mood.  “The guy who plays me can’t be any good, either.”  Not if he agreed with Stark.

“That’s not fair, Steve,” said Hayley.  She sounded remarkably like the fans protesting Thor’s treatment of Loki.

“Yeah, trust me,” Downey said, “Chris practically _is_ Captain America.  You should see his twitter.  Half of it is him arguing with corrupt politicians, and the other half is fawning over dogs.”

“He loves the role,” said Hayley.  “He loves everything Captain America represents.  He almost didn’t accept the part when Marvel offered it to him, because he wasn’t sure he wanted to be that kind of movie star, but he just fell in love with the whole concept.  If you could talk to him, he’d tell you that himself.”

Steve wasn’t sure he believed that.  How could this man claim to understand what Captain America stood for, and yet not agree that the Accords were an unacceptable muzzle?  A way for politicians to sit by and watch people die while patting each other on the back and insisting they’d done the right thing?  Or even a way to use the Avengers as a weapon – it was a very small step from telling somebody _yes you may_ to _yes you_ must _, whether you like it or not_.  Steve had once been a soldier who took orders, but that had been a very different kind of war, where he _knew_ who the enemy was.

This time, Downey was awake to see how Natasha got them _out_ of Canada again.  He was both impressed and appalled.  Once they were safely away from the border crossing, he got out of the van and removed the license plates.

“That’s not gonna keep us _out_ of trouble,” said Nat, as he climbed back in.

“I’m sure you have a back-up plan,” Downey replied.

She did.  They stopped for gas a little later, and while Downey paid – using his own credit card, after Nat wrote the numbers down for him on the back of their Wal-Mart receipt – she stole the plates off a very similar van that was sitting out behind the station with one tire missing.

“I’d start a list of the crimes we’ve committed this weekend, except that I didn’t start right away and I don’t think I could remember them all.”  Downey climbed into the driver’s seat, while Hayley scooted over to the passenger side, and tore open a granola bar to munch on.  “Jail sucks.  There’s nothing to do.  And I _really_ wanted to do _Sherlock Holmes 3_ eventually.  I haven’t spoken to Jude since he started doing _The Young Pope_ and I miss him.”

That seemed like a statement designed to invite questions.  Steve thought of several, but refused to give Downey the satisfaction of hearing him ask them.

Nobody wanted to spend another full twenty-four hours on the road, so they pulled over and camped out in the van overnight.  In the morning they found a little coffee shop in a roadside diner in northern Utah and ate breakfast there, while going through the local newspaper with a metaphorical fine-tooth comb.  There was a small article titled _Terror Attack Rocks Canadian Comic-Con_ but that was it.  Nothing about aliens at NASA, which suggested that the Chi’Tauri were at the very least biding their time.

The waitress, a bleach-blonde woman in black-rimmed glasses that all but overwhelmed her pale face, brought them their bill.  She then began to gather up the dishes, and put them in a pile before taking a deep breath, setting them down on the table again and saying, “okay, I _need_ to know.”

Steve saw Natasha brace herself, but the waitress turned, instead, to Downey.

“Are you Robert Downey Junior?” she asked.

“No,” said Downey, without so much as a blink.  “I’m Tony Stark.”

“People ask him that _all the time_ ,” said Natasha.

Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, they pulled into the parking lot outside the studio.  It all looked exactly the same as it had when they’d left – the hangar-like building, the row of trailers, even the food truck and the cast and crew sitting around in folding chairs eating lunch.  Half a dozen conversations seemed to be going on as people passed script pages around, and the arrival of the van didn’t merit more than a passing glance or two – until Steve and Natasha got out.

Silence fell.  People stopped in mid-sentence or mid-mouthful to stare at them.  Maddy actually dropped her clipboard.

“Uh, hi,” said Steve.  “Is Donny still here?”

Maddy scooped her papers up off the floor and ran up the steps to the building.  “Ridley!” she shouted, as she opened the door.  “ _Ridley_!”

A moment later, Donny himself appeared from between two trailers and hurried towards them.  He was wearing another NASA t-shirt, although this one looked like it had been in a fire, and he had a black eye, a scraped cheek, and a bandage on his right hand.  For a moment Steve wanted to ask him what had happened, then realized it was probably just makeup.  Steve himself probably looked just as bad if not worse, and _his_ injuries were all real.

“Where have you two been?” asked Donny.  “Ridley’s been flipping out.  He’s looking for replacements for you.  He was on the phone with Margot Robbie this morning.”

“We need to talk to your friend Kevin at NASA,” Steve said.

Donny stared at him in open bewilderment.  “Huh?  Why?”

“We need to…” Steve looked at the rest of the cast and crew, who were still sitting or standing around, staring at them.  They were going to need to tell Donny the truth, he realized, and they couldn’t do it with an audience.

Natasha agreed.  “Not here.  This way.”  She grabbed Donny’s right arm, Steve took his left, and they dragged Donny over to the _Chris Evans_ trailer.  Dodger ran ahead of them and waited at the door, and when Natasha opened it the dog bounced up the stairs and turned in a circle in the kitchen, delighted to be home.  Steve and Nat took Donny inside, and got him seated on one of the living room sofas.

“This is bad, isn’t it?” asked Donny.  “Whatever it is?”

“It is,” Steve said.  “Listen to me.  I’m not Chris Evans.  I’m Steve Rogers.”

Donny blinked, then started to get up.  “I’m not playing,” he said, holding up his hands.

“Sit down.”  Nat put a hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him gently back into his seat.  “Just hear us out.”

“Did you hear about what happened in Canada?” asked Steve.

“Uh… George Romero died?” Donny guessed.

“No, the thing at the convention,” said Steve.

“A comic book expo was invaded by Chi’Tauri looking for Loki,” said Nat.  “He came here trying to hide from them but they managed to follow him after finding Tom Hiddleston in _our_ universe.”

“We can’t get back, because there’s no magic here,” said Steve.  “So we need to find another way, and we figured NASA would be the place to start looking.”

“Thor and Loki are outside, with Hayley Atwell and Bob Downey,” added Nat.  “You can ask them if you like.”

Donny stared at them.  He opened his mouth, then shut it again, his eyes darting back and forth in his face as he either tried to figure out what to say or else searched for an escape – it was impossible to say.  Before he could make up his mind, however, Steve heard the sound of sirens.

“Oh, crap,” sighed Steve.

The cops knew where they were going, and Steve and Natasha didn’t have time to escape – the trailer was quickly surrounded.  The only way in or out was the door, Steve was in no condition to fight, and Natasha couldn’t take them all by herself.  All they could do, as the door banged open and the police came charging in one after another, was put their hands up and let themselves be arrested.

“You have the right to remain silent,” a cop said to Steve.

“Yeah, I know,” said Steve.  He was probably going to.  It was about the only thing he could do.

They were escorted outside to the waiting police cars.  On the way, they passed the van – another cop was standing there, writing notes while Downey and Hayley talked to him.  Thor and Loki might have still been in the vehicle, but if so they’d ducked down out of sight.  Or maybe they’d had the sense to get out and run.

“I don’t think Bob’s gonna bail us out this time,” said Nat, as they were put in a police car.

“I thought you knew his credit card number,” said Steve.

She looked out the window, where Downey was in the act of giving a piece of paper to the police.  “Yeah, that’s not gonna help.”

* * *

They were taken to a police station in Los Angeles rather than the one in Malibu – this one had cells with solid doors instead of barred walls, painted in a horrible shade of pale blue-green, the kind of colour that appeared in hospitals or prisons.  There weren’t even any bars here to rattle.  Steve didn’t say much when the cops tried to question him, because there was nothing much to be said.  He’d had _reasons_ for doing all the stupid things he’d done over the past few days, but nobody would believe him if he talked about them, so he kept his mouth shut.

Maybe Thor and Loki could still make it back, he thought.  Maybe Bob and Hayley and Donny would be able to help _them_.  Maybe once Loki was back in their own universe, he could bring the rest of them back by magic… although it was distinctly possible that even if he _could_ he wouldn’t _bother_.  Maybe Natasha could still break herself and Steve out of jail.

Or maybe they were exactly where they deserved to be.

There was a knock on the cell door, and a policeman – a white man in his forties, with bushy eyebrows and mustache but a shaved head – opened it a crack.  “Hey, Evans,” he said.

Steve propped himself up a little.  His cell had a bunk bed in it, and he’d been lying on the lower bunk with his good leg hanging off the end and his bad one folded awkwardly under it.  “Yeah?” he asked.

“Johansson wants to talk to you,” the cop said.

“Oh?” asked Steve, trying not to sound too hopeful.  She must have a plan for getting them out of here.

“Yeah.  Come with me.”

The man let Steve lean on him to hobble to one of the little interrogation rooms.  These were even more claustrophobic and depressing than the actual cells, with linoleum floors and cinder block walls and the single eye of a video camera staring from one corner.  Steve sat down in a chair made of hard red plastic, and the cop thoughtfully pulled a second one over so he could put his injured foot up.  A moment later, Natasha came in.

She was still wearing the clothes she’d bought at the Wal-Mart – distressed jeans, red chucks, and a t-shirt with a butterfly on it in sequins.  She came and sat down across from Steve without saying a word, her face completely blank.  The cop stepped back and shut the door, leaving the two of them supervised only by the video camera.

“I’m sorry,” said Natasha.

Steve didn’t answer.  He had been prepared to hear a plan and start carrying it out.  He didn’t know what to do with an apology.   

“This is… this is my fault,” she said.  “I tried to take charge of the whole situation because I didn’t want to invoke the Accords, even though I should have known we’d need more help.  Then once we got here, instead of focusing on what we needed to do to get back, I went to see Mari.  I felt like I _had_ to… I just had to see her, I had to know what that was like, to have a child look at you the way Clint and Laura’s kids look at them.”  She hung her head.  “It sounds so stupid now, even to me, but I _had_ to.  You understand, right?”  She risked a glance up at him, and there was something in her face that Steve had never seen before.  She was _begging_.

And he did understand.  Steve understood, because he’d also _needed_ to see Peggy, one last time.  He’d needed to just pass his fingers through the illusion of that thing he could never have.  “Yeah,” he said.  “I do.”

“And now we’re in here instead of saving the world, because of me,” said Natasha.  “You were right, if I hadn’t done that, this would all have been much easier.  So I’m sorry.”

What could he say to that?  He couldn’t tell her it was all right because it wasn’t, but… “I’m sorry, too,” he decided.  He was worry he hadn’t been able to learn from her mistake, sorry he’d gotten involved in this, sorry he hadn’t fought when he could have and _had_ fought when he shouldn’t.  “Loki said this world had everything any of us ever wanted, but it’s all lies.  Mari’s not your daughter, and Hayley’s not Peggy.”

“And there’s no Jane Foster for Thor, and Loki’s fans only love him as part of a story,” Nat agreed.  “He _is_ the god of lies.  It would be.”

It was worse than that, though, Steve thought, because in order to have those lies they would have to give up the truth.  They could stay here and assume their alternates’ identities as actors, living a lie and lying for their living.  Steve was a rotten liar because the truth was too important to him.  When he lied, he was always worrying about what the consequences of the lie might be.  He’d been able to star in half a dozen Captain America movies because he was playing himself, telling a _form_ of the truth.  He couldn’t play anybody else.

Steve did his best lying when he just _avoided_ the truth rather than actively denying it.  That was how he’d managed to lie to Stark for a couple of years, keeping the truth about his parents’ deaths from him by simply never letting the subject come up.  He’d told himself he was protecting Stark from something that would hurt him, but the truth was that he’d been afraid Stark would hate Bucky for it – and now he hated Steve and Bucky _both_.

Steve had taken something into his own hands when he shouldn’t have, and sure enough, he’d suffered the consequences.

“So now what?” he asked Natasha.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “They’re not going to offer us bail this time because we’re a flight risk – I overheard one of the cops talking to somebody from the DA’s office.  They’re worried that if we tried to flee the country over one charge of assault, we must be involved in something way worse.”

That figured.  “So we have to escape,” said Steve.

“I guess,” said Natasha, but she wounded oddly reluctant.  “Honestly, though, that’s just gonna make this worse.  We’ve already ruined these people’s lives and careers.  Johansson’s husband is going to want a divorce and he’ll probably take custody of Mari.  Both of us will have trouble finding acting work after running off for a crime spree like we did.  Can we really, in good conscience, do any _more_ damage?”

“Can we really in good conscience let the Chi’Tauri take Loki?” asked Steve.  “Tom Hiddleston has a life, too, and I’m sure he wants it back.”

“I don’t know.”  Natasha pushed her hands into her hair.  “Like I said… it’s all so much more complicated than just yes or no.”

What was she suggesting, then?  “We can’t just sit here and rot in jail!” Steve said.

“Technically, we can,” said Nat.  “It depends on how badly we want to get anything done.”

She sounded as if she actually thought that might be for the best.  Steve had never heard that kind of hopelessness from Natasha and it scared him worse than any number of alien invaders possibly could.  He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Nat,” he said, “we can’t just quit.  We have to go home – that world _needs_ us!”

“I know,” she said.  “But I need some time.  I need… I don’t know what I need.  I wish I’d told Thor to just go to Stark and do things through official channels.  Then at least it would be _them_ instead of us.”

“There’s nobody better than us,” said Steve, although at the moment he wasn’t sure he believed it.  “There’s nobody else I’d trust to deal with this.”

She shook her head.  “That’s always been your problem, Steve.”

The policemen showed them both back to their cells.

Steve spent the night in restless sleep, broken by periods of exhausted wakefulness.  The police had offered him some Tylenol but he didn’t trust them or this insane alternate universe enough to accept it, so he lay awake in the dim, ugly fluorescent lighting, trying desperately to think about something other than the damage he’d done.  He hoped somebody was taking care of Dodger.  If Bob Downey and Hayley Atwell didn’t deserve to be part of this mess, then Dodger definitely didn’t.

What was wrong with him?  People had been _hurt_ in the hotel and at the convention, and Steve was worrying about a _dog_.

What was Chris Evans going to think when he returned home to find he was now a criminal with a bad ankle?  That his friend Donny thought he was crazy and that Scarlett was losing her family because her husband thought she’d been having an affair with him?  If he hadn’t already thought ‘Captain America’ was a foolish character he hadn’t wanted to play, he would when he found out what Steve had done with his life.  It was a damned good thing Steve _hadn’t_ given in to the temptation to call Evans’ parents, because that could only possibly have made things far worse.  It still might, of course… what if they came to see him in jail?

Steve didn’t have a watch or a phone, and there was no clock or window in the little cell, so there was nothing to tell him when morning came.  He eventually gave up on getting any more sleep and tried to get up and pace, but his abused ankle hurt too much.  His stomach grumbled, and he wondered if anybody were going to bring him something to eat.  Steve had never been in jail before this all happened, but surely they would let him have meals and showers.  He limped over to the door and peeked out the little window, but there was nobody in the hallway outside.

“Hello?”  Steve knocked on the inside of the door.  “Is anybody out there?”  If he _asked_ for food, they’d have to bring him some, right?

There was no response.

He next tried the video camera in the corner, waving at it in the hopes of getting somebody’s attention.  That garnered no reaction, either.  Shouldn’t somebody be watching the feed?  Was the camera even on?

It was impossible to say how much longer he waited.  It felt like hours, but with no reference for the passage of time, it might have been only a few minutes.  Eventually, the door opened and a muscular policewoman with salt-and-pepper hair in a tidy bun looked in on him.

“You’ve got visitors” she said.

This time, Steve didn’t bother to get his hopes up.  It was probably Evans’ parents, for no better reason than so Steve could finish ruining everything.  “Do they have breakfast?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Yeah, we’ve got food.  Sorry, we’ve been… distracted.  I’ve also got a crutch to help you walk.”  She opened the door the rest of the way to offer it to him.  “Follow me.”

She led Steve back into the little interrogation room, which was now crowded with people.  They weren’t Evans’ parents, though – instead it was Bob Downey and Hayley Atwell, and Donny Glover with Dodger the dog in his arms.  All three of them looked pale and worried, as did the other two cops who were in the room with them.  Donny put Dodger on the ground, and the dog trotted over to lick Steve’s hand.

Steve reached down as best he could to rub the dog’s head.  “How are you doing, buddy?” he asked.

A moment later, Natasha arrived, also with a police escort.  She also seemed surprised to see who it was, but at first nobody said anything.  Bob held out a bag from Krispy Kreme.

“Officer Gamba said they forgot to feed you,” he said.

“Thanks.”  Steve straightened up and accepted the bag, but didn’t open it.  Something way bigger was going on here than his empty stomach.  The serious silence in the room felt as if they were about to hear that somebody died… and Steve immediately had two awful thoughts about who it might have been.  “Where are…” he paused, making sure he was saying the right names.  “Where are Chris and Tom?”

“They’re okay,” said Hayley.

“We’re all okay,” Bob agreed, and then seemed to realize something.  “You’ve been in here all night… they probably haven’t been letting you watch TV.”

Steve saw the colour drain from Natasha’s face, and felt something similar probably happening to his own.  “What happened?” he asked, although he had a feeling he already knew.

“The Chi’Tauri are in Houston, aren’t they?” asked Natasha.

Donny held out a newspaper.  The photograph on the front looked like the view from a news channel’s weather camera – it showed a complex of buildings and parking lots that Steve vaguely recognized from one official visit and a number of previous news stories – the Johnson Space Center.  Smoke was rising from several points within and around it, and an inset showed a blurry close-up of the object hanging in the air above.  It was a Chi’Tauri leviathan.

The headline said simply, _They’re Here_.


	12. They're Here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for not updating on Sunday or Monday like I usually do. I've been miserably sick for the last couple of weeks.

Steve only got a glance at the newspaper before Nat snatched it from Donny’s hands so she could read the article, but the image seemed to burn itself into his brain.  The Chi’Tauri invasion did not feature in Steve’s nightmares, at least not with the regularity that Bucky’s fall or the Insight helicarriers did, but that certainly didn’t mean he’d forgotten them.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“Around four this morning, it said,” Bob replied.  “It was the first thing on the news when I got up.”

“It’s the _only_ thing on the news,” said the policewoman who’d brought Steve to the room.  “That’s why we forgot to bring you breakfast,” she added sheepishly.  “Sorry about that.”

That was understandable and it was nice to have an apology, but Steve’s first thought was that this probably meant the rest of the people in the police station were still distracted.  He looked at Natasha, and she nodded.

In a flash, she vaulted up onto the shoulders of the nearest cop.  This was a big, muscular man, but by the time he realized what was happening he was flat on his face on the floor, and Natasha was shackling him to the table using the handcuffs off his own belt.  A second cop tried to grab her, but Hayley tackled him from behind and took his gun.  Steve felt a moment of genuine pride watching her.  Of course she knew how to do that!  Hayley Atwell might not actually _be_ Peggy Carter, but she did play her on TV!

The third cop, the woman, turned to run, but Steve swept her feet out from under her with his crutch, and Bob and Donny grabbed her to fasten her to the table with the others.  Hayley stuffed a handkerchief in the woman’s mouth and used her own stockings to gag the men, while Natasha snatched Bob’s hat – a blue snap-back with the name _STARK_ embroidered across the front – and hung it over the lens of the camera.

“That was actually kind of fun!” Bob panted.  “I used to fantasize about doing something like that!  Of course, at the time I would have _needed_ to, I was way too fried to be capable.”

Steve leaned on Donny and Hayley as they all hurried out of the building, looking straight ahead and trying to walk like people on a mission.  Nobody challenged them.  In fact, nobody even seemed to _notice_ them – everybody in the building was hanging on televisions, on radios, or on their phones, watching the news from Houston.

Bob’s van was waiting outside.  They climbed in.

“Quick job getting the plates replaced,” Natasha observed.

“I know some people,” Bob replied.  He climbed into the driver’s seat.

“So what _is_ happening in Houston?” asked Steve, as Donny helped him into the back.  “Other than just that they’re _there_?”

“The Chi’Tauri are holding the Johnson Space Centre hostage,” Hayley explained.  “Nobody comes in and nobody goes out – anyone who tries gets fried.”  She leaned to help Steve with his seat belt, but he shooed her away.  He may have been forced to admit he needed help walking, but he refused to have his belt done up for him like a child.

“So does anyone who takes potshots at the Leviathan,” added Bob, starting the engine.  “Lots of guns in Texas.  And lots of idiots who don’t learn from what happened to the last guy.”

“They let the director record a message for the outside world.”  Donny brought it up on his phone.  “Here.”

Steve took the phone, and Natasha leaned over his shoulder to watch.  The image showed a woman in her sixties, with short brown hair, dressed in a coral-coloured blouse and a necklace of large painted wooden beads.  Despite liberal application of concealer around her eyes it was obvious she hadn’t slept very much the previous night.  Standing behind her was the Chi’Tauri commander, holding the staff-like weapon Steve had clung to at the convention centre.

“I’m Johnson Space Centre Director Ellen Ochoa,” she said.  “I’ve been asked to deliver our guests’ demands to the planet Earth.”  Her voice was calm and even, almost robotic, but there were beads of sweat on her forehead, and her hands, folded on the desk in front of her, were clenched to try to keep them from shaking.  “They want me to assure you that our world has only one thing their master wants, and that’s…” she took a deep breath, cringing at what she was about to say.  “That’s Loki, the God of Mischief.  This message is being recorded just before seven AM central time.  As if its release, we have twenty-four hours to deliver Loki to them, or they will begin destroying the centre, one building at a time.  Once Loki is in their custody, they will leave with no further damage.  They have asked me to remind you that we have no heroes.”

The message ended there.

_We have no heroes_.  Steve’s ankle throbbed.  “What time is it?” he asked.

“It’s ten-fifty here,” said Bob.  “That means it’s almost one in Houston.”

That left them only eighteen hours more.  “So where are we going?” Steve asked.  Bob was certainly driving like he had a purpose, but not in the right direction for Texas.

“First we’re gonna pick up Thor and Loki,” he replied.  “They’re hiding out at my place in Venice.”

“Then we’re going to see Kevin, like you asked,” Donny said.

Steve frowned, and traded a glance with Natasha.  “What, we’re just going to walk right in?” he asked.  Perhaps after seeing Nat get them across the border, and what she’d done in the police station, the actors were counting on _her_ to find a way.

It was Donny who answered – he was sitting in the front, next to Bob, and now he turned to look back at the passengers.  “You betcha.  The aliens are in Houston, but Kevin doesn’t work in Houston.  She works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and _that’s_ right here in Pasadena!”

For some reason, that made Steve feel much better.  Maybe it was because of all the mistakes they’d made in the past few days, here finally was one that worked in their favour.

What Bob had called ‘my place in Venice’ turned out to be an even more ridiculous mansion than Scarlett Johansson’s.  The entrance was located in a tower with a windmill on top.  A woman with long brown hair, wearing a floral sundress, was waiting on the step, holding the hand of a little girl about the same age as Marigold Darville.  When the van stopped and Bobo got out, this child let go of her mother and ran to give him a hug.

Bob scooped her up and kissed her cheek.  “Hi, Princess,” he said.  “You’ve been looking after Mommy for me?”

“Yeah!” the girl said.

“Well, let me make sure she’s still in one piece.”  Bob went to give the woman, who must have been Susan Downey, a kiss on the cheek as well.  “How are the guys?” he asked.

“Surprisingly well-behaved,” Susan replied.  “They’re in here.”

She led them all inside, to a big, open-concept sitting room with large windows and hardwood floors.  It was a very bright, comforting space that was somehow both like and unlike Tony Stark’s self-consciously futuristic homes.  The Downey family clearly shared Stark’s love of natural light, but they seemed to favour soft, organic shapes over the harsher lines and curves he surrounded himself with.

Thor was on the sofa, watching television, while Loki entertained a blond boy of about six or seven by telling him a story.

“… and then,” Loki was saying, “I re-assumed my own shape!  Thor was entirely startled.  He hadn’t even suspected.”

“And then he stabbed me,” said Thor.

“Only a little,” Loki said, with a dismissive gesture.  “And I used a very sharp knife.”

“Isn’t a sharp knife _worse_?” asked the boy, eyes wide with worry.

“Not at all!” said Loki.  “The sharper the knife, the less it hurts.  If you want someone to _suffer_ , you use a dull knife.  If you _really_ dislike them, you use a _spoon_.”

“Don’t listen to Loki, Essex.”  Bob put his daughter down and went to claim his son.  “He gives terrible advice.”

“That depends on what sort of advice you’re looking for,” said Loki.

Thor got up off the sofa and came to give Steve and Natasha another hug – this one rather gentler than the one at the airport.  The situation was clearly wearing on him, too.  “I am happy to see you,” he said.  “I knew the police must release you once the gravity of the situation was clear to them.”

“Of course they did,” said Natasha, without missing a beat.

Bob ruffled Essex’ hair and kissed the top of his head, then grabbed a duffle bag that was sitting next to the glass-topped coffee table.  “No stabbing people,” he said to his son.

“Unless they deserve it,” Loki added.

“How do I tell?” asked Essex.

“You’ll know,” Loki promised.

Bob headed for the front door again, and Susan followed him.  “Are you leaving again right away?” she asked anxiously.

“I’m afraid so,” Bob said.

She grabbed his arm.  “Do you know when you’ll be back?”

“Not offhand,” he replied, but then he smiled and reached up to gently tweak her chin.  “Don’t worry – I’m a cat.  I always come back, especially when you don’t want me to.”

When they got back on the road it was Donny in the driver’s seat, heading north to skirt downtown Los Angeles and its traffic on their way to Pasadena.  It was a short drive, nothing like the one required to get them to Houston – and that was a deeply worrying fact in itself.  Eventually they would _have_ to go to Houston to meet the Chi’Tauri, but Houston was as far from LA as was Calgary in Canada.  That would take them way over the twenty-four hour deadline.

“We’re gonna have to buy more time,” he said.

“I know,” Natasha agreed.  “Not sure how we’re gonna do that… the Chi’Tauri don’t have a history of being reasoned with.”

“I kind of had an idea,” Bob said, “but it’s sort of a partial idea at this point… twelve percent of an idea, if you will.  We’re gonna have to bluff them, I think, and to do that we’re gonna have to make like we _are_ the Avengers.  Fortunately,” he added, “I know where our costumes are!  They were on display at the LACMA as part of their _Dressing the Movies_ exhibit which got flooded out when a pipe broke, so now they’re all in storage on an upper floor of the museum.  Whatever we end up doing is probably going to involve those.”

Steve’s hopes rose momentarily, but then he reminded himself that the word _costumes_ was going to mean something different to Bob Downey than it did to Steve Rogers.  “They’ll just be movie props, though,” he said.  Steve in his own body could survive being shot but he still didn’t _like_ it.  As he was, he didn’t really want to rush into battle unprotected again.  Was that thought cowardly, or just good sense?

“Yeah, but it might help morale if you look the part,” said Bob.  “Or dampen theirs.”

Nat shook her head.  “Thanks for the thought, but if I’m in the middle of a fight I’d rather not try to use something only to remember too late that it’s fake.”

“What of you?” asked Thor.  “Do you mean to don an Iron Man suit and join us?”

“Oh, no, not me.”  Bob shook his head hard.  “For one thing, the actual suit only exists in maquettes and computer code – and even if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be getting my claustrophobic ass into it.  As soon as the faceplate closes, it’s all stunt doubles and I’m having a cucumber facial in my trailer.  If the president decides to nuke Houston, I’m out.”

There was _another_ worrying unexplored angle, as if Steve had needed more of those.  “What’s the president doing about this?” he asked.  If somebody decided to do something foolish, they would need warning and a contingency plan.

“Last I heard?” said Bob.  “He was golfing.”

The Glendale Freeway wound its way between suburbs up into the San Rafael hills, and ended at the security gate outside the JPL campus.  Donny brought the van to a stop next to the kiosk there, and rolled down the window.

“Hi,” he said to the guard.  “We’re here to see Dr. Kevin Farinas.  She’s expecting us.”

“I’ll call in,” said the guard.  He frowned, craning his neck out the window of the little hut to better see the other people in the vehicle.

“Friends of mine,” said Donny casually.  “You might recognize one or two of them.”

Natasha waved.

While the security guard made the phone call, Donny explained where he knew Kevin from.  “She’s one of the people I talked to at JPL while I was doing _The Martian_ ,” he said.  “They’re all a little weird up here, but I was really impressed by how Kevin just _buried_ herself in her work.  She had this little bed set up in her office so that when she had something big going on she could spend the night there.  The idea was that if she got an idea in her sleep she should be able to roll out of bed and work on it immediately.  Ridley and I decided that had to be how Rich Pournelle worked.”

The guard returned to the window.  “All right,” he said.  “Go ahead in.”

The gate rose to let them through, and they entered the JPL campus.  This was a cluster of blocky buildings that mostly dated from the 70s and 80s, nestled in a gap between scrubby desert hills.  It looked like a university, or even the business core of a small city, but either one of those places would have been busy and right now the JPL looked almost deserted.  There were cars in the parking lots, but nobody was outside, and despite the bright sunlight it made the place look a little spooky.  For a moment Steve was puzzled, but then he remembered – this universe was learning about the Chi’Tauri for the first time.  Like the cops in Los Angeles, the people who worked at the JPL must all be glued to the news, waiting to see what would happen next.

The first person they saw after the guard at the gate was waiting outside one of the buildings for them.  This was a very small Filipina woman with straight black hair in a thick braid halfway down her back.  She was dressed in denim shorts and a dark green t-shirt with the words _stand back – I’m going to try science!_ , and she bounced on her toes and waved as the van pulled up.  Donny undid his seat belt, and barely had time to climb out of the van before she ran up to hug him.

“I was so glad to hear you weren’t in Texas!” he said.

“Are you kidding?” she asked.  “I wish I were!  We’re all freaking out here!”  She had a slight accent, but her English was grammatically flawless.  “Real-life aliens!  First contact!  This is… we are present for what will probably be _the_ defining moment of history from here on!”

“Yeah, that’s great,” said Donny, without her enthusiasm.  He stepped back – he was so much taller than her that ending the embrace almost counted as putting her down – and asked, “has anybody figured out yet what they mean when they say they want Loki?”

“We’ve got theories,” Kevin said.  “We figure they’ve been monitoring our broadcasts and want to appear to us in a form we recognize as fitting our preconceived notions of extraterrestrial life.”  She gestured emphatically as she spoke, apparently just for something to do with her hands.  “That would _probably_ mean that wanting Loki is a misunderstanding of some sort.  I think they want to talk to somebody in charge.  We’re just not sure how to communicate to them that that’s not what the movie was saying.  You said you had some information?” she asked eagerly.

“Yeah, kinda.”  Donny looked over his shoulder at the van, and the people inside took it as their cue to start climbing out.  Thor came first, then he and Nat helped Steve.  Bob climbed out of the passenger’s side, and opened the door to force Loki to emerge, as well.  It should have been a dramatic reveal of sorts, Steve thought, but instead it was just hopelessly awkward as they all came to stand in a half-circle around Donny and Kevin.

Kevin stared at them for a moment, then grabbed Donny’s shirt.  “We can’t just give them Tom Hiddleston!” she protested.  “We have no idea what they’d do to him, and he probably couldn’t communicate with them any better than anyone else!”

“It’s not… oh, boy.”  Donny grimaced.  “Let’s go sit down.  It’s… it’s a hell of a story.”

Kevin showed them inside.  The outside of the JPL campus may have looked almost deserted, but the interior was crowded and busy, with people running around on phones, flipping through documents, and carrying food and drink.  Kevin led them down a long hallway past a series of offices and meeting rooms, and there were people in all of them – Steve caught snatches of conversation as they went by.  In one small conference room, a group of technicians were bent over an enormously blown-up photograph of the Leviathan, arguing about how it might propel itself.  In a similar room across the hall, a silver-haired man was writing on a whiteboard, his hand moving so fast that the equations he scribbled were almost unreadable.  He was muttering about mathematics and atomic structure to an audience of JPL employees, one of whom, a Sikh boy who was probably still in his teens, was tapping the older man on the shoulder trying to get his attention.

“Dr. Shostak,” he was saying, “they speak English.  Dr. Shostak?”

In another office further up the hall, a woman was on the phone shouting.  “What do you mean the president doesn’t care?  Oh, that’s bullshit!”  She was still audible as they rounded a corner, and Steve tried to catch the next words – only to be distracted by the sound of a very familiar voice saying, “that man is playing Gallaga!”

Steve stopped and checked to make sure Bob was still with them – he was – then dropped behind the group and found the room the sound had come from.  Inside was some kind of small lecture room.  Somebody had connected a laptop to a projector, and a dozen people of assorted ages were sitting at the desks, taking notes as they watched what could only be this universe’s movie about the Battle of New York.  And there on the screen was… there was _Steve_ , fresh out of the ice and dressed in that ridiculous comic book version of his costume, looking like he had no idea where he was or what he was doing here because frankly, he didn’t.

So that was Chris Evans as Captain America, was it?  At least he _looked_ more like Steve than the guy who’d played him in those awful TV movies from the early 80’s.

The temptation to linger there, to keep watching and see what else had made it to the screen, was very powerful indeed, but Steve didn’t want to be recognized again or cause any more disasters.  He tore himself away and limped along as fast as he could to catch up with the others before they noticed he was missing.

At the end of the hallway was a filing room, full of shelves of bound journals and cabinets full of papers.  There were other people in there, searching for material, but they didn’t appear interested in Kevin and her guests.  She showed them to a corner with a small table where they could sit down and talk in relative privacy, and Steve tried not to show how relieved his was to take the weight off his bad ankle.

“All right,” she said to Donny.  “What’s your story, and why does it involve half of the MCU?”

Donny looked at the others, who were more qualified to tell it than he, and Steve wondered whether he’d actually heard the whole story yet.  Steve and Nat had only had time in the trailer to tell him an extremely truncated version – if he’d learned more it would have to have been from Bob and Hayley, or perhaps from Loki and Thor.  Steve kind of hoped it was from Thor.  Thor’s telling would probably make them look the least like idiots.

It was Thor who now nodded once and stood.  “I think I ought to begin,” he said.  “Lady Kevin, I am not Chris Hemsworth, although from what I have learned of him, I think him a worthy representative for me.  I am Thor, son of Odin, and this is the tale of how I came to your world.”

Thor told Kevin how he’d learned about Loki’s escape and how, upon learning his brother was on Earth, he’d come to the Avengers for help recapturing him.  Natasha picked up there and described how Thor had approached her and how she’d told him to keep it quiet for fear of invoking the Accords.  Finally, Steve told Kevin – and Donny, who was listening raptly – about how they’d arrived in this universe and some of what had happened since.  Kevin sat upright in her chair and paid attention, and her expression changed several times.  At first there was skepticism and annoyance, then dawning surprise, and then finally real interest as she realized that here, after all, were the answers to her questions about their visitors from space.

“So _that’s_ what Ochoa meant when she said we had no heroes!” she exclaimed.  “Except we do, because here you all are!  So what are you gonna do?”

Steve looked around at his companions.  “We were kind of hoping somebody _here_ could give us some ideas.”

“We are but ordinary mortals here,” said Thor.

“We need to get Loki back to our universe,” Steve explained, “because yours isn’t capable of facing the Chi’Tauri.  He can’t do it himself because there’s no magic here, so we need to find another way.”

“What?  Like wh… oh.”  Kevin held up her hands.  “Oh, no.  I may have graduated from Berkeley at fourteen but my thesis was on orbital mechanics!  I _have_ worked on possible applications of multiverse theory but that’s entirely theoretical and I can’t even _touch_ this body-switching stuff!  That would need… I don’t know, probably a whole faculty of neurologists!  We don’t _begin_ to understand the brain or consciousness that well.”

Steve’s heart started to sink again.  Could they really have come here for nothing?  Could it be that the _science_ they needed didn’t exist in this universe, either?  Or… what if only _part_ of it did?  “Then don’t worry about that,” he said to Kevin.  “What we need most is a way back to our own universe.  Once we’re there, Wanda can probably switch our bodies back, and we can find a way to send your actors home.”  That was a little more roundabout, but it would still work.

Loki sniffed.  “If we’re in our own universe, _I_ can switch our bodies back, and I’ll make less of a mess doing it.  No need to burn down a forest to boil your tea,” he said.

Steve didn’t think he’d trust Loki to do it.  Having said that, would Loki allow himself to be held to it?  They would have to keep Wanda in mind as a backup, although Loki’s disparaging attitude did make Steve wonder what sorts of things might go wrong.  “And if we go back,” he added to Kevin, “the Chi’Tauri will follow us.  Like your director said in her broadcast, we have nothing else they want.”

“She’s not our director, Mike’s our director,” said Kevin, frazzled.  “Ellen’s only director at Johnson.”

“I wouldn’t have brought them here if I didn’t think you could help them,” Donny said.  “What about that lecture you gave at the SETI institute last year?  About ways to control wormhole travel?”

“The one inspired by Scalzi’s skip drive?”  Kevin shook her head.  “That was about how to _control_ a wormhole between universes, not how to _make_ one.  Everything I said assumed that somebody _else_ got the wormhole started and I just had to aim it.  So unless one of you has a wormhole-maker in your pocket, that won’t help.”

That sounded pretty final to Steve, but apparently not to Bob Downey.  He looked thoughtful and said, “ _they_ must know how to make one.”

“They?” asked Steve, and then realized.  “You don’t mean the Chi’Tauri, do you?”

“Remember when I picked you guys up at the police station and you thought I was Tony?” asked Bob.  “You said that since I was here, I must have a way to get back.  The aliens must be planning on going home once they have Loki so they can turn him over to Purple Josh Brolin for torture or whatever.  Ergo, they’ve got a wormhole-maker.”

Natasha nodded.  “If they’ve got a wormhole- _maker_ ,” she said to Kevin, “can you build a wormhole- _aimer_?”

“Ye… maybe,” Kevin said.  “Thing is, how do I know what to aim it _at_?  I can select properties of the target universe – at least, assuming that Chopra-Gopal-Dawson theory is correct – but I can’t put a big dial on it that you can turn to Earth-19999, because I don’t know what that universe is like on a subatomic level.”

“I can do it,” said Loki.  “If I know what the controls represent.  It sounds clumsy,” he admitted, “but if your _theory_ is anything akin to the weave of the cosmic tapestries as I understand it, it should work.”

“Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page,” said Steve, who was a little worried by the direction this conversation was taking.  “Are we talking about somehow getting to the Chi’Tauri mothership and stealing _their_ wormhole-maker?”

“I don’t think they have a mothership,” said Nat.  “You suggested there were only the four of them and we haven’t yet seen any evidence that you were wrong.  There’s only one Leviathan over Houston.  If they could bring more, they would.  That may be why they needed the tesseract in New York – because the technology they had without it could only let in one small vessel at a time.”

“All right, so we get on board the Leviathan to steal their wormhole-maker,” said Steve.  “Can we do that?”

“Um,” said Kevin, raising a hand.

“If there’s only four of them I don’t see why not,” Nat said, though her optimism didn’t ring very true to Steve.  _Only four_ Chi’Tauri had already nearly killed them a couple of times.  “We’ll just have to keep them distracted.”  She turned to Bob.  “You mentioned the costumes… I know Paul Bettany already bowed out, but do you think you cans scrounge up Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo?”

Bob was already nodding.  “Like, they think we have no heroes, and we say, _surprise, bitches, yes we do_?” he asked.

“Exactly!”  Nat nodded.  “And find our stunt doubles, too – mine, Steve’s and Thor’s.  They’ll fit those costumes you mentioned, too.”

“You do realize the aliens will shoot at us if we do that,” Bob cautioned her.  “And also that there’s _still_ no way I’m getting into anything even _approximating_ a real-life Iron Man suit.  I’ve seen the cosplayers in the cardboard and foam ones and I feel like I’m suffocating just looking at them.  Gwyneth makes fun of me but I stand firm.”

“Can I say something else here?” asked Kevin.

“We’ll figure something out,” Nat promised.  “Maybe we’ll just show you on TV and keep them _looking_ for you.  As for getting to the Leviathan, there was at least one Chi’Tauri on the ground at Johnson, because it was standing guard behind Ochoa while she gave her speech.  It’ll have had to take one of those scooter vehicles to the ground, and I’ve driven one of those before.”

Steve’s heart was beating faster again – after the emotional ups and downs of the past few days it was a wonder it could maintain a steady pace anymore.  There were a lot of details that would still have to be ironed out, but it was starting to look like Bob’s twelve percent was becoming an actual plan.  “So the fake Avengers keep them distracted, while me, Nat, and Thor steal the wormhole-maker.  Then we bring it back to Loki, we all go home using Kevin’s wormhole- _aimer_ , and Loki switches our bodies back.”  There might be some intervening steps if their alternates had scattered – say if Tom Hiddleston was a prisoner of the Chi’Tauri while the others were on the Raft or something.  It was, however, workable.  “How long will it take to build this thing?” he asked Kevin.

She heaved a frustrated sigh.  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!  Super-scientists who can build anything you want in an hour and a half only exist in comic books and on _Star Trek_.  Tony Stark might be able to build a fusion reactor in a cave using a box of junk, but I can’t!  I never planned on actually _building_ anything like this.  With the testing and everything, god, it would probably take six months, and that’s _very_ optimistic!”

Six _months_ was such a ridiculous number that it took Steve a moment to accept that she’d really said it.  That was totally unacceptable, and when Steve looked around the table he could see that the others were as shocked and disappointed as he was.  He checked his watch.

“Uh, okay,” he said.  “What _can_ you do in sixteen hours?”


	13. Word of God

“Sixteen hours,” Kevin echoed.  “Jesus.”

Steve wanted to tell her not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but he remembered all too clearly the ribbing he’d gotten the _last_ time he’d asked somebody to mind their language.  He kept his mouth shut.

“In sixteen hours,” she said carefully, “I _might_ be able to draw a pretty picture of it.”

“What if you skip all the testing stuff and just go for it?” Bob asked.

Donny cleared his throat.  “I was in this movie a while back.  _The Martian_.  Did you see it?”

“You gotta understand,” Kevin added, “I’m just one person, and I’ve got other stuff to do.  I’m trajectory on Europa Clipper, and there’s Mars 2020, and we’re still trying to hammer out that ice giant mission… Mike was very clear that it’s all gotta stay in the pipeline, just in case we survive this.”

“Right, right,” said Steve.  His brain was starting to recover from the shock of _six months_ , and now he was trying to figure out a way around it.  “So instead of snatching the wormhole machine out from under their noses and running, we’re actually going to have to neutralize the Chi’Tauri permanently.  Then we’ll have to be on constant guard, in case the ones back in our universe get tired of waiting and send another group.”  The Avengers were used to quick victories, but if this would require dealing with a long siege… well, that was what they’d have to do.  “So we need to figure out how to capture or kill them.”

“I am not flying any nukes anywhere,” said Bob.  “Just to get _that_ out of the way.”

“You killed quite a few of them during the Battle of New York, didn’t you?” Hayley asked.  “How did you do it then?”

“By hitting them really, really hard,” said Natasha.

That didn’t work here, as they’d already demonstrated – without Steve’s serum, Thor’s Asgardian strength, or Natasha’s enhancements, they just couldn’t hit hard enough.  There must be another way.  “They all collapsed when the nuke went off,” Steve remembered.  “Fury and the scientists figured they had some kind of connection with the mother ship that had been cut off when the wormhole closed.”  If they couldn’t get a bomb into space, doing that again was going to be difficult, but there had to be _some_ way.

“They must have a weakness,” Hayley said thoughtfully.  “Aliens in comic books always do.”

Steve’s brain, which had been bubbling a moment ago as he tried to think, came to a dead halt.  _Comic books_.

“What?” Hayley asked, seeing his expression change.  “Do you know what it is?”

“No,” said Steve, “but we know somebody who does!”  He reached into one pocket, then the other, and then realized they’d all left their phones back at the hotel in Canada during their hurried escape.  “We need a phone,” he said.  “And we need… does anybody have Stan Lee’s number?”

Hayley brought her hands together, a delighted smile on her face.  “Of course!” she exclaimed.

“I’ve got it!”  Bob pulled a phone out of his jacket and began scrolling through the contents.

“Use this one.”  Kevin grabbed a yellowed 90’s cordless handset off another table.  “It’s got a speaker.”

Steve picked up the receiver.  “Isn’t that a new phone?” he asked Bob.  “I mean, we left the hotel with nothing… how do you have his number?”

“I saved my contacts in the cloud,” Bob said.  “Our world might not have all the fancy hologram stuff, but we’re not barbarians.”  He found the entry and turned the phone to show the number to Steve, who started punching it in on the JPL phone.  “Although Stan Lee didn’t come up with the Chi’Tauri,” he added.  “I think that might’ve been Mark Miller.”

“Well, if Stan Lee doesn’t know, then at least he can give us the number of somebody who does,” said Steve.  He turned on the speakerphone and set the handset in the middle of the table so that everybody could hear and talk.  It rang once, twice, then three times.

“He never answers right away,” said Bob, trying to sound encouraging.  “And he doesn’t have voicemail.  He says there’s no point because he’s not gonna listen to it anyway.”

A fifth ring, then a sixth… and then finally, on the _tenth_ , there was the soft sound of a pickup.

“Stan Lee,” said the old man’s voice.  “Marvel Allfather.”

“Hello!” said Steve.  “This is Steve Rogers!”

“Oh, yes!” said Lee cheerfully.  “I told you I’d run into you again.  What can I do you for, Cap?  No, wait, you gave up Captain America after _Civil War_ , didn’t you?  I’m still trying to convince Feige to get you into the Nomad costume.”

Steve refused to let himself be distracted.  “Stan,” he said, “we need to know the Chi’Tauri’s weakness.”

There was a pause.  “What, you want me to just _tell_ it to you?” asked Stan.  “That’s cheating.”

“No, it’s not!” Steve protested.  “We’re trying to save the world here!”

“No, no, no,” Stan insisted.  “When the narrator pulls something out of nowhere to tie up the plot, that’s a _deus ex machina_ and it’s been lazy writing ever since the time of the ancient Greeks!  How would you feel if you woke up and found out this had all been a dream?  You’d be disappointed, right?  It’s the same thing.”

“Actually, I’d be okay with that,” said Steve.  Waking up in the palace in Wakanda and learning none of this had ever happened?  He’d take it.

“Well, I’m not,” said Stan.  “I’ve never approved of it, and I’m not going to start now.”

“This isn’t a story, Stan!” said Bob.  “There are actual aliens in Houston and they’re gonna kill people.”

“It’s a story to _somebody_ ,” Stan insisted.  “If the people in _our_ stories actually exist in other universes, which they demonstrably do, then obviously we’re a story in somebody else’s, and I’d hate to give them a letdown ending.”

“Ah!”  Hayley leaned forward.  “But a _deus ex machina_ is something that hasn’t already been established in the story’s world, right?  Right?  So you _were_ pre-established!  We met you in the hotel room and you gave us pointers there!  It’s properly a part of the narrative universe, and you can do it again without cheating!”

There was no immediate reply.  Steve waited, drumming his fingers impatiently.

“Stan?” asked Bob.

“I’m still here,” said Stan.  “You know what?  She’s _right_.  Well done, Miss Atwell!  Very well, then,” he decided.  “The Chi’Tauri who are after you lot are drones.  Remember when the wormhole closed in New York and they all just fell down?”

“Yeah, we were talking about that,” said Steve.

“They’re a hive-mind,” Stan explained, “and the center of their thought and initiative lies in the queen.  If they haven’t got a queen within range, all they can do is lie there and drool.”

“So there are actually _five_ of them here, then,” said Nat.  “We haven’t seen the queen because they’re keeping her hidden.”

“Exactly,” Stan agreed.  “Find the queen, and you can bring them all down at once and cart them off to Area 51 for dissection!  Does that help?”

“Yeah,” said Steve.  “That helps a lot.”

“Wonderful!” Stan said.  “I’ll look forward to hearing about it later – bye now!”  There was a click as he hung up.

Hayley reached out to turn off the handset.  “I… I don’t think he really believes us,” she observed.  “I think he considers this some big game.”

“No, he believes it,” said Bob.  “Stan’s been waiting for something like this his entire life.”

“I don’t _care_ if he believes it,” Steve decided.  “As long as his advice is good.”  He sat back and tried to make a list of tasks.  “So… distract the Chi’Tauri, kill or incapacitate the queen, steal the wormhole machine and bring it back here so Kevin can figure out how to direct it, and then… deal with maybe six months more of Chi’Tauri incursions as they come after Loki again and again?”

“Optimistically six months,” Kevin reminded him.  “I have honestly no idea.  I’ve never tried to do anything like this.”

“When you put it that way it sounds impossible,” said Hayley, chiding.

“Nothing is impossible,” Thor assured her.  “Some things are merely very difficult.”

“We’re used to impossible tasks,” Nat agreed.  She rubbed her hands together.  “Okay, where will they be hiding the queen?  Loki, when you were working for the Chi’Tauri, did you ever…”

“I wasn’t working for _them_ ,” Loki sniffed.  “ _They_ were working for _me_.  And I was never on board one of their frightful vessels.  Those are for the rabble.  I had better ways to get around.  But,” he added, “they kept their queens on the mother ships that housed the Leviathans, far away from Earth where no threat could be present.”

“Okay, I can tell you categorically that there is no Chi’Tauri mothership in orbit of earth,” said Kevin.  “We monitor earth orbit because it’s full of crap that can crash into satellites and make trouble.  Besides, anything big enough to be considered a _mothership_ , if it were between us and the moon you’d be able to see it from your backyard.”

“And we’re already pretty sure that one Leviathan’s all they’ve got,” Nat said, “because if they had more they wouldn’t hold them back.  If they’ve got the queen with them, then she’s on board that.”

Loki sighed, and then took his glasses off with a scowl – but one that seemed to be directed at the glasses themselves rather than at anything else – and leaned forward.  He obviously didn’t like talking about his time with the Chi’Tauri, but he recognized the need.  “Considering the esteem in which the queens are held,” he said, “they would have had to alter the troop transport to let her live on board.  They would not squeeze her into a little sleep pod like a common soldier.”

“Perhaps that is why there are a mere four of them,” Thor said.  “Those we fought in New York seemed to house dozens.  We need to know what’s inside the vessel.”  He looked at Bob.

Bob shook his head.  “The whole thing was special effects, remember?” he asked.  “A bunch of tech people put it all together in a computer while I was busy knocking up Susan.  I don’t even remember what it was supposed to look like from the _outside_.”

“There were some people back down the hall who had blueprints or something,” Steve said, remembering the rooms they’d passed on the way in.

A quick search found the room in question – JPL employees ranging in age from twenty to seventy had a set of plans and concept art spread out on a table, and were poring over it while a nervous Marvel Studios executive hovered behind them, trying to discourage them from drawing on the original artwork with sharpies.  Steve waited in the hall, leaning on the crutch the policewoman had given him, while Natasha marched in.

“Good afternoon, folks,” she said, and reached for the blueprint mockup they were examining.

They stared at her – especially the representative of the studio, a woman in a pea-green skirt suit, with gray streaks in her shoulder-length brown hair.

“Scarlett?” the woman asked.

“Natasha.”  She held out her hands.

The employees looked worried.   They started picking up the drawings and diagrams, loathe to part with them.  Nat put her hands on her hips.

“Do you want us to beat up your aliens for you?” she asked.  “Or should we just let them blow up Houston?”

“Give them to her,” the woman in green ordered.  “I trust her with them better than I trust you guys.”    

Word spread quickly, and soon it seemed like half the people at JPL had crowded into one of the big conference rooms, where three Avengers, three actors, and a specialist in orbital mechanics were trying to come up with a slightly more coherent plan.  The woman in green, whose name seemed to be Iris, had loaded a 3D model of the Leviathan on a laptop, and Natasha was examining it.

“The single-person craft dock here.”  She ran a finger down the side of the Leviathan as it rotated past.  “So that’s where we’ll be going in, rather than at the mouth like Stark did.”

“The internal structure is relatively weak,” Bob noted.  He’d found a packet of ‘astronaut ice cream’ somewhere, and was munching on the chalky-looking pink and white contents.  “There’s been big arguments about that online – how Tony couldn’t scratch it from the outside but blew it up from the inside, and how it crumpled up when the Hulk punched it.”

“The vessels are not designed to operate under gravity, only within their own anti-gravity fields,” said Loki.  “If your weapons or the monster’s fist damaged the anti-gravity generator, the whole machine could collapse under its own weight.”

“Like a sea serpent suffocating on a beach,” Thor agreed.

“So if we can lay some charges inside, we ought to be able to bring it down,” said Nat.  “Especially if we can find the generator… that’s gotta be in the head,” she pointed, “if the Hulk managed to punch it.”

“Sounds good,” said Steve.  They were starting to have a plan again, but there was still the matter of time.  When he checked his watch again, they were now down to fourteen hours and twenty-six minutes.

Yet more time was required to make travel plans and get to the airport, and there were only eleven hours left when they finally boarded the three-hour flight from Pasadena to Austin.  Commercial flights into and out of Texas had been grounded, so they went on a JPL cargo plane that was normally used for transporting satellites or space probes to their launch sites.  As such, it didn’t really have room for passengers – they had to sit on narrow benches down the insides of the fuselage, like in an old troop transport plane.  Bob spent most of the trip on the phone, trying to round up the rest of the cast to meet them in Austin, and from there they would spend _another_ two and a half hours driving to Houston.  It all seemed a criminal waste of time.

“In _our_ world, we’d just fly in with the quinjet,” he grumbled.

“No, we wouldn’t,” Nat told him, “because one of the terms of the Accords was that our air, sea, and land craft would have to observe normal regulations and restrictions.  They couldn’t quite make Stark’s suit and Sam’s bird costume count as aircraft, because if they did they would also have had to restrict War Machine, but the quinjet would have needed a flight plan and the whole thing, and couldn't land at a closed airport.”

“Just to annoy us,” Steve grumbled.

“No, not just to annoy you,” said Kevin.  She was accompanying them because they would need some cooperation from the people who worked at the Johnson Space Center, and one of their own stood a much better chance of convincing everybody that this whole thing was real.  “You can’t just swoop in, because what if the aliens realize the Avengers are coming and don’t want you there?  They might start killing hostages in order to keep you away, and that’s what you’re trying to make them _not_ do.”

That was… that was a point.  Steve’s instinct was to argue that in that case, it was an even _worse_ idea to slow down the Avengers because if they got in fast they’d be able to rescue more hostages… but the hostages wouldn’t have been in danger if the Avengers hadn’t been there.  The _real_ problem was that it left Steve right where he hated being – with his hands tied.  “Why is everybody in this universe on Stark’s side?” he asked.

“Actually, I was one of the girls in the _Team Cap_ t-shirts,” said Kevin.  “In the real world, though, just because we don’t have superheroes doesn’t mean we don’t have super _villains_ of a sort, and they get really mean when things don’t go their way.  Nobody wants to end up dead because the bad guys want to piss the heroes off.  There’s meaningful ways to go, but that’s not one of them.”

Steve could understand that, he really could, but the idea of being told where and when to do things and who he was _allowed_ to save still stuck in his throat.  Even if some kind of oversight were necessary, there _had_ to be a better way than the Accords to get it done.  Some kind of… it was a word Steve normally didn’t like much, but some kind of _compromise_.

With a mere eight hours left to act, they landed in Austin, Texas, at eleven PM central time.  A white van with the red and blue NASA logo on the side was waiting there to meet them.  The back cargo doors of the plane rumbled open, and Kevin undid her seat belt, grabbed her backpack, and ran down to meet the driver – a woman in her forties, with a bottle-blonde pixie cut and multiple ear and eyebrow rings.

“Colleen!” Kevin said delightedly.

“Kevin!”  The older woman held out her arms to hug her.

“Let me guess,” Kevin said.  “You got out through the tunnels, right?”

“Close, but not quite,” Colleen said.  “I was late to work this morning, and what I saw when I got there made me turn right around.  The tunnels are open, though, because people have been trickling out of them all day.  Ochoa and Bridenstein have been organizing it, just two or three at a time so the ETs don’t get suspicious.  They’ve got some sort of way to scramble signals so we can’t call in or out, but the escapees have been bringing messages and it seems like so far the only people they’ve hurt are those who’ve tried to attack them first.”

“They said all they want is Loki,” said Kevin.  “They must’ve meant it.”  She turned and waved to the others as they came down the ramp.  “Everybody, this is Dr. Colleen Hobb.  I was her intern when I started at NASA.”

“When Kevin told me she would never bother me about her Martian Moons Mission idea again if I did her a favour, I knew it was something serious,” Colleen said.  “We’re really doing this, huh?  They think they want the Avengers, so we’re giving them the Avengers?”

“Pretty much,” said Kevin.  “Colleen and I are gonna show you how to get in.  The JSC was built during the cold war, so there’s bunkers and tunnels all over the place, and they connect to the main pedestrian tunnels in the city.  Colleen knows them better than anybody.”

“I used to give tours when I was in college,” said Colleen.

Steve hobbled up to shake the woman’s hand.  “Nice to meet you, Dr. Hobb,” he said.

“You too, Mr. Evans,” she replied.  She looked him over rather skeptically, and he supposed that between what had started off as an intentional disguise and now the injured ankle, he probably looked distinctly un-Captain-America-like.  That couldn’t be the only reason she’d called him _Mr. Evans_ , though – he caught Kevin’s eye, and she just shrugged.  Maybe she'd thought Colleen wouldn't believe it, or simply didn't need to know.

Colleen opened the door of the van.  “Pile in, everybody,” she said.  “You’re meeting the rest of your group at Pennzoil Place?”

“That’s right,” said Bob, patting the phone in his pocket.  “I got almost everybody.”

“All right.”  Colleen did up her seat belt.  “So what’s the plan, exactly?”

The plan had gotten a little more complicated since their first iteration, but the basics remained the same: Steve, Natasha, Loki, and Thor would sneak into the Johnson Space Center through the underground tunnels, dressed to blend in with the staff.  They would locate the Chi’Tauri landing craft and then, since the aliens had scrambled all outgoing signals, launch a flare to indicate they were ready.  Bob would then broadcast a challenge to the Chi’Tauri from the Avengers.  While the aliens attempted to deal with that, the four dimensionally-displaced heroes would fly up to the Leviathan and dock with it.  Steve, as the injured one, got the job of finding the wormhole machine.  He had no idea what it would look like, but that wasn’t a handicap because the rest of them wouldn’t, either.  Meanwhile, Natasha, Thor, and Loki would have to find and incapacitate the Chi’Tauri queen.

“You were gonna get us something to help with that,” Nat reminded Kevin.

“Yeah,” said Kevin.  “We’ve got just the thing.  Right, Colleen?”  She smiled.

“Absolutely,” Colleen said.  “Although you’re gonna have to go get it yourself, because it’s already inside the facility.”

It was a long, dark ride to Houston, and when they got there they found the city had turned off most of its lights.  Instead of the glittering urban landscape Steve had expected, there was just block upon block of dark suburbs, some with lights on in the buildings but no streetlights or advertising signs or anything of that sort.  It reminded him uncomfortably of the blackouts in Europe during the war.  As they entered downtown dark skyscrapers rose up around them like weird, alien spires of rock… and between them to the southeast, Steve could see a strange effect in the air, like a cone of shimmering pink light almost too faint to be seen.  Some kind of field the Chi’Tauri were projecting, maybe, to mess with the communications or to detect people trying to sneak in or out.  There was a quality about it that Steve couldn’t quite define, as if its flickering were somehow out of step with the rest of the world.  It did not belong in this universe, and somehow, it looked it.

“If you guys can get your hands on whatever’s causing _that_ ,” Kevin said, “I know at least six people who’d give their right arms to be able to take it apart.”

“I’m one of them,” Colleen agreed.

“I’ll see what I can do, but it’s not a priority,” said Steve.

Steve had seen pictures of modern skylines in both the US and abroad in the past few years, with their fanciful skyscrapers that sometimes looked more like sculptures than practical buildings.  He’d even gotten a chance to visit a few of them, and hadn’t _always_ left them in ruins.  Pennzoil Place in Houston was new to him.  It was a pair of oddly-shaped towers in black glass, with a pyramidal atrium connecting them.  With most of the lights off, the stars and moon were fiercely bright, reflecting in the rippling glass very like what a portal to another dimension might look like.

They parked on the street.  There was nobody around, but Colleen still put change in the meter before buzzing at the front doors for a security guard to let them in.  Inside the atrium there were potted plants growing, and entrances to a variety of shops and restaurants.  Because of the late hour these were all closed – but there were lights on in the Starbucks, and a group of people were sitting at the tables having drinks and talking.  Bob grinned and hurried ahead to meet them.

“Hey, guys!” he said cheerfully.

There was a man in street clothes behind the counter, making the coffees.  He looked up and waved, and Steve recognized him at once – it was Hawkeye, or the actor who played him.  Jeremy Renner was a little older than Steve thought Clint Barton was, and not in quite such good shape, but it couldn’t have been anybody else.

“That for me?” Bob asked, pointing to the coffee.

Jeremy handed it to him.  “Are we really doing this?” he asked.

“I’m the one who organized it and even I don’t know,” Bob replied.  He turned to face the others who were approaching – Steve, Natasha, Thor, Loki, Donny, and the two women from NASA.  “Okay, folks, this is Jeremy Renner.  Ruffalo bowed out but that’s probably okay, because it’s not like he can hulk out if they call our bluff.  That’s Lizzie Olsen,” he pointed to a blonde woman in a loose gray sweater.  The hair colour may have been wrong, but the face was Wanda’s.  “Where’s Aaron?”

“He says he’s on his way,” Lizzie promised, without even a trace of Wanda's accent.

“Chadwick couldn’t make it but Cheadle said he wouldn’t miss it,” Bob went on, as Colonel Rhodes waved to them from another table.  “We’ve got Sebastian, of course, and here are the stunt people…”

Steve probably should have paid attention as the introductions continued.  The stunt people were going to be taking the same big risk as the actors, and Steve knew from his own time making movies that the contributions of stunt performers to that industry were often overlooked.  At that moment, however, his ears simply shut down and suddenly the whole world was a million miles away.  Natasha’s distressing prediction had just come true – he was face-to-face with this world’s Bucky.

The man Bob had called Sebastian must have been working on some other film, because he didn’t look much like Bucky at the moment.  His hair was cut short, and he had a mustache that made him look rather startlingly like Howard Stark.  If he’d tried that during the war, Steve would have teased him about it mercilessly.  But there was no mistaking Bucky’s dimpled chin and blue eyes, nor the expression on his face – it was intrigued and yet skeptical, not sure what was going on but game for it anyway.  Steve had gotten similar looks from Bucky a thousand times in the past.

And Steve knew he shouldn’t, but just as Natasha had predicted, he _desperately_ wanted to talk to this man.  He felt like he needed to at least hear his voice.  Would he be British, like Howard had disconcertingly been?  Or American like Wanda?.  God, he hoped Bucky would be American.  Of course this was all an illusion, because Loki _would_ find them a world in which their entire lives were illusions, but hearing Bucky speak and the voice _not being Bucky’s_ would have been a kick in the gut Steve didn’t think he could take.

Then Bucky spoke first.  He _was_ American, although his accent was slightly different from the one Steve remembered.  Steve wasn’t sure if that helped or not.

“Take a picture,” he said.  “It’ll last longer.”


	14. Houston has a Problem

“Take a picture.  It’ll last longer.”

Steve realized he’d been staring – and not just _staring_ , but _gawking_ like a moron, his mouth actually hanging open.  He quickly closed it and lowered his head, embarrassed.  “Sorry.”

The others were getting up now, coming to greet and shake hands with their visitors from an alternate universe.  A woman who must have been Scarlett Johansson’s stunt double came up and gave Natasha a hug.  Questions were asked and answers were offered, and Steve realized that Nat and Hayley were both watching him out of the corners of their eyes.  They were worried he’d do or say something stupid.  They had every cause to be.

Sebastian Stan got up and came closer, looking Steve over cautiously.  “So as Bob explained it on the phone,” he said, “you’re _actually_ Steve Rogers, or at least you believe you are, and you’re here to make these aliens go back to the other universe.”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” said Steve.  He could guess what this man was thinking, and he had better say something to reassure him – and the women – that Steve had a grip on himself.  “Sorry for staring.  I know you’re not him.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sebastian replied.  “It could be worse.  You could be in somebody’s Stucky fanfiction.”

Steve was about to ask him what that was, then realized it was a portmanteau of _Steve_ and _Bucky_.  That, in turn, reminded him of the drawings he’d seen for sale at the convention, and he realized, “oh.”

“I don’t get it,” Sebastian added.  “I just want to kiss Scarlett Johansson, just once, and they don’t want to let me have that!  You got to do it, Mark got to do it… when’s it my turn?”

This was spoken like it was part of some personal joke, but if so, Steve was of course not in on it.  “I… I don’t know,” he said, and something inside him clenched as he realized that sure enough, this had been a mistake.  Steve had nothing to say to this man who looked like Bucky but wasn’t, and Sebastian had nothing to say to Steve.  As before, this universe contained nothing but shadows of things Steve wished he could have – shadows designed to taunt him in the most painful way possible.

A moment went by in grinding silence despite the conversations going on in the background, and then Sebastian said, “he’s gonna be okay.”

“Huh?” asked Steve, who thought he must have missed something.  The statement didn’t connect with the joke about wanting to kiss Scarlett.

“Bucky,” said Sebastian.  “I’m not supposed to give out spoilers, but he’s gonna be okay.  I’ve already shot my cameo for _Black Panther_ , and after that I’m gonna be in _Infinity War_ and _Avengers Four_.  Don’t stress too much.  My contract was nine pictures.  Depending on if you count the cameos I’ve got at _least_ three to go.”

Three mores movies?  Bucky would come out of cryo okay and be alive and well for… honestly, _three more movies_ could be anything from two weeks to twenty years.  Either way, Steve shouldn’t be able to know that yet – that was exactly what Bob had been talking about over dinner at the hotel, about ruining future plot points.  Yet Steve couldn’t bring himself to worry about it.  He felt like he’d been carrying a boulder around without realizing it, and now somebody had lifted it away.  _Bucky was going to be all right_.

“Thanks,” he said, with a relieved smile.

Sebastian clapped him on the shoulder – gingerly, as if afraid Steve would flinch away, but he didn’t.  “Don’t mention it,” he said.

The rest of the world began to come back into focus.  Individual voices emerged from the distant murmur, and Steve heard Colonel Rhodes ask, “what about Smaller Don?”

“I’m gonna be Spider-Man,” said Donny.  “I’ve always wanted to be Spider-Man.”

“The costume won’t fit, though,” said Colonel Rhodes.  Steve wondered if the Spider-Man costume had been made for ‘Bigger Don’.

“What, you think I don’t have my own Spider-Man costume?” Donny asked.

Rhodes chuckled and shook his head.  “How silly of me!”

Bob took a head count and made sure everybody was present, then said he’d arranged for somebody to stop by with their costumes.  Before the group separated, Steve did get to meet Chris Evans’ own stunt double – this was a guy named Sam, which seemed fitting enough.  Steve was sure to give him a smile and a firm handshake and to tell him he appreciated his hard work.  Then Colleen showed them to a flight of steps, and they descended into Houston’s underground walkways.

Steve had been picturing something dark and secret, cramped concrete hallways with lots of pipes, but they turned out to be more like an unground shopping mall.  There were tiled floors, benches, and potted plants, and the walls were lined with cozy-looking little shops and kiosks, all closed up for now but ready to open again the moment the city was safe.  The area was intended for use by pedestrians, but for employees and emergencies there were several little vehicles, like electric golf cards, parked next to an information desk.  Colleen started up one of these, and Steve, Nat, Thor, Loki, and Kevin piled into and onto it.  The engine made only a soft whirring sound, but even that seemed very loud and echoey in the big, empty space.

“I always enjoyed giving the tours,” Colleen said, turning down a south hallway.  “Once you get into the back parts it feels very secret-government-project-y.”

That seemed a strange thing to say in the surroundings they were in, but after a few minutes of driving through the wide shopping tunnels, they stopped to open a gate with an _authorized personnel only_ sign on it and entered something more like the utility spaces Steve had been picturing.  With the city evacuated the lights were out, but the little cart had surprisingly powerful LED headlights, and Colleen gave the impression she could have found her way even in pitch darkness.

She drove them to a dead end at a set of metal shutters, where she punched in a code on an access panel.  The shutters rolled open onto a narrow, concrete-walled tunnel that vanished into the dark.  A switch turned on a line of dime fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling, and their flickering greenish light seemed to show the tunnel vanishing into infinity.  Colleen climbed back into the driver’s seat, and they continued on their way.

This section of the tunnels didn’t echo as much, but in a way that was worse.  Steve could remember sneaking into underground HYDRA bases during the war, and the oppressive feeling of the earth above weighing down on top of them.  It was something he’d tried not to think about back then.  Since his return he’d looked some of those places up, and learned that most of them had collapsed in the ensuing seventy years.  _That_ was not something he needed to think about _now_.  He focused on looking straight ahead, wondering if they’d meet any of the escaping JSC employees coming the other way.

It was about a half-hour drive.  The little cart was slower than a car would have been, but the direct route and lack of traffic helped to compensate.  After perhaps twenty minutes they ran out of fluorescent lights and from there on they were entirely in the dark, with the vehicles headlights briefly shining on painted pipes and bundles of wires as they passed.  The sight of a light on ahead was a relief, and it grew closer and closer until it was revealed as one incandescent bulb above another metal door.  Colleen brought them to a stop.

She punched in another code, and rolled the gate open.  “Welcome,” she said grandly, “to the Johnson Space Centre.”

It was probably impressive on the surface, but the area they entered was another dim underground hallway with visible pipes and ducts in the ceiling and equipment and furniture piled against the walls.  Colleen led them past doors that led into offices and labs, all of them unoccupied, and decorated with flyers, comic strips, and a couple of posters detailing projects the employees had worked on.  She followed the hall to the end, and opened the door to a locker room.

“Here,” she said.  “Find something to wear.”

Some of the lockers had combination locks on them, but most did not, and there were a fair number of clothes, shoes, and possessions just lying around on the benches or on the floor.  Bits of junk and filing boxes had been put on top of the rows of lockers for storage, and the whole place reminded Steve more of wartime SSR bases than of a high-tech research facility like the ones at the Avengers Headquarters.  He started looking through clothing for something that would fit.

“Try to avoid anything colourful or memorable,” Natasha said, pulling down a black t-shirt that had been hung off an open locker door.  “Go nondescript.”

“Nondescript doesn’t work for Thor,” Steve said.

“I bet it doesn’t,” Kevin observed.

Thor grabbed a white janitor’s coverall with the NASA logo embroidered on the pocket and held it up against himself.  It looked about the right size, so he unzipped it and started putting it on.  Natasha found a pair of galaxy-print leggings and the t-shirt, which said _Pluto: 1930-2006_.  She tied a couple of knots in the hem to make it fit better.  Steve found a button-down shirt that fit well enough, and a tie with a cartoon alien on it.  That was probably nondescript enough for NASA.

“Are you changing?” Kevin asked Loki.  He was still wearing the suit and tie from the convention, and had made no move to put on anything else.

“No,” said Loki.

Steve knotted his tie and turned to Colleen.  “You mentioned some kind of weapon against the Chi’Tauri queen,” he said.

“Yeah,” she nodded.  “The one I had in mind is liquid nitrogen.”

“That’s not a weapon,” Steve protested.

“Hell, yes, it is,” said Nat, tying the laces on a pair of baby blue chucks she’d found somewhere.  “Liquid nitrogen is kept at minus two hundred degrees centigrade.  Anything it touches, it’ll freeze on contact.”

Kevin chimed in.  “When it boils, it makes a heavy, cold mist that hangs around for a minute or so.  Useful for putting out fires and suffocating your enemies… although that’s discouraged.”

“We’ve got lots,” Colleen said.  “So much of our equipment needs to be kept cold.”

“And if we can freeze the Queen instantaneously she’ll be in much better condition for your scientists to dissect later,” Nat said cheerfully.

Steve wished she hadn’t said _freeze instantaneously_.  It was a phrase he’d heard his doctors at SHIELD use way too often.

“I know where it’s stored,” Colleen explained, “but I don’t work with it personally so I don’t have access.  We need to find either somebody in cryonics or somebody with a master key.”

Under normal circumstances, Steve thought, he would have just broken down the door to the storage room.  But that would probably have set off an alarm, alerting everybody in the complex that something was up.  The Chi’Tauri would come to investigate and then there’d be a fight, which he couldn’t do right now… damn it.

Once Colleen pronounced them suitably inconspicuous, they got in an elevator and headed up.  Steve closed his eyes and took a number of deep breaths, telling himself over and over to stop being a _coward_.  A whole city full of Chi’Tauri had scared him, yes, but it didn’t seem right to be terrified of _four_.  His aching ankle made him very, very aware that he could not survive long falls or heavy blows the way he normally could, and the fear of dying loomed over all his thoughts like a thundercloud.  He hadn’t felt _that_ since he’d had whooping cough at the age of twelve.

At the same time… he was doing this anyway, wasn’t he?  Because saving this world and these actors from the consequences of Loki’s mistake was the right thing to do.  That was a good sign.  What was it Roosevelt had said?  _Courage is not the absence of fear, but the assessment that something else is more important than fear_.  Serving his country had been more important than Steve’s fear of the super-soldier treatment.  Ditching the _Valkyrie_ had been more important than his fear of dying in the fireball, even if Peggy _would_ have called him a self-sacrificing wanker for it.  This time, keeping the Chi’Tauri from killing people who weren’t even from the same _universe_ as Loki was more important than whether Steve got hurt.

A moment later, that train of thought brought Steve to another, less-comforting station – he hadn’t said goodbye to Hayley.  He’d been distracted talking to Sebastian Stan, and then the group had split up and she’d stayed behind in Pennzoil Place.  Her job would be to help stage-manage the little improv play the actors were putting on.  It wasn’t that Steve thought she would have kissed him and said _go get ‘em_ or anything like that and he wouldn’t have wanted her to.  He did _like_ her, though, and they had in common that they both adored Peggy Carter.  She deserved a goodbye.

Or maybe Steve was just fooling himself again.  He hadn’t said a real goodbye to _Peggy_ , either when he’d crashed the _Valkyrie_ or when she’d died last year.  Maybe he wanted to vicariously correct that mistake.

The elevator chimed as it reached the ground floor and the doors opened, and Steve’s thoughts dispersed in a puff of panic.  There was a Chi’Tauri right in front of them.

He tensed, and out of the corners of his eyes he saw everybody else do the same.  The good news was that the alien was facing away from them.  The _bad_ news was that it was aiming a weapon at a group of six or seven humans standing across the hall.  In front of this small crowd was Ellen Ochoa, the woman from the YouTube video.  She was still wearing the same coral-coloured blouse, although now it had a large dark stain on the front, and her arms were held out on either side as if to protect the people cowering behind her.  Her chin was up defiantly.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.  Colleen had said that Ochoa had been helping people sneak out through the tunnels.  Now she’d been caught in the act and was about to be punished for it.  Steve had to do something… but what could he do in his condition?

The Chi’Tauri had heard the sound of the elevator arriving, and turned to look.  Kevin and Colleen, neither of whom had yet seen one of their visitors up close, both panicked.

“Shit!” said Colleen, and hammered on the _door close_ button.

“ _Mierda!_ ” said Kevin at the same time, and hit the button for the top floor.

“Scatter!” Director Ochoa ordered the people behind her.

The employees ran off in both directions, which got the Chi’Tauri’s attention again.  It looked left, then right, not sure who to chase, then turned back towards the elevator and met Steve’s eyes as the door closed.  Steve saw the bruise on its chest next to the biomechanical implants.  This was the same individual soldier they’d seen at the hotel and the convention centre, and he was quite sure that it had _recognized_ him, just as he’d recognized it.

That was even worse.  If the Chi’Tauri knew the Avengers were already here, they would know that Bob’s message was a bluff.

“Jesus, they’re _huge_!” said Kevin, as the elevator rose.  “I mean, you know they’re huge because you saw the movie and they’re like eight feet tall, but that’s totally different from it actually looking down at you from eight feet up!”

“We have to get back down there,” said Steve.  If the Chi’Tauri were a hive mind then _all_ of them now knew that Steve and the others were in the building, and like or not they had a fight on their hands.  What could they do now?  This whole plan had hinged on not attracting attention, because they were in no shape to fight!  Steve was right where he most hated to be, with his hands tied.  Accords or no accords, there was nothing he could do to save those people.

“Stop here!”  Colleen pressed the third floor button, then pounded on _door open_.

“What’s here?” asked Thor.

“The liquid nitrogen,” said Colleen.

“You said you needed a key,” Steve protested.

“ _You_ guys seem to think you’re the Avengers,” Colleen retorted.

Steve looked at Natasha, who nodded.

Unlike the one at the hotel, this elevator had the decency to stop _at_ the floor they were hoping to reach.  The lack of angry aliens trying to break in from above was helpful as well.  Colleen led them u a hallway to a door with multiple warning signs posted on it, and Natasha got to work on the electronic lock.

“There,” she said, as it opened with a _clunk_.  “That was easy.  I would have expected NASA to have better security.”

“Not a lot of people want to steal liquid nitrogen,” Colleen observed.  “We mainly want to keep the interns from using it for pranks.”

“Yeah, but you’re the _government_ ,” Natasha pointed out, with a disappointed pout.  She opened the door and turned on the light.  Inside the room was firefighting equipment, protective clothing, and a line of cubical freezers that reminded Steve of nothing so much as old top-loading washing machines.  It was all very carefully organized and labeled, with big yellow _CAUTION_ signs everywhere.  “Then again,” Nat mused, “If this is your first alien invasion, you’re probably not as important as NASA is in our universe.”

“We’re probably not as well- _funded_ ,” said Colleen.

“When we get money, we like to spend it on rockets instead of fancy locks,” Kevin agreed.

Steve had hoped they’d be allowed to open the freezers, but instead Colleen went for a shelf of canisters that looked an awful lot like ordinary fire extinguishers.  She began passing those around.

“Is this all?” asked Thor.

“Not what you were picturing?” Natasha guessed.

Thor examined the extinguisher, hefting it in his hands and turning it over to read the instructions.  “I had imagined something more like the equipment the ladies used in _Ghostbusters_ ,” he confessed.

“Oh, you finally got to see it, did you?”

“Yes.  Loki and I watched it during the night we spent at Bob Downey’s house, while you two were in jail,” Thor said.  He took one of the firefighting hatchets down from the wall and swung it experimentally, then tucked it into the belt of his coverall.  “It is not one of the greatest sagas of your people, but quite diverting nonetheless.”

“I liked the original better,” said Loki.

They figured the Chi’Tauri would be watching the elevators, so they took the stairs back down.  This was a laborious journey on Steve’s bad leg, with his crutch in one hand and the nitrogen fire extinguisher in the other, but he insisted on going first.

“This is the twenty-first century, you know,” Colleen told him.

“I’m not being chivalrous,” said Steve.  “If we meet any Chi’Tauri, we might need to use the nitrogen.  Loki, Thor, and Natasha should stay in the back to save theirs for the Queen, in case we can’t come back for more.  That puts me in the front.”

“Along with us,” said Kevin firmly.

“If you’re okay with that,” Steve said.  He hoped they were up to it – these two women were scientists, not fighters.

At the bottom of the steps, Kevin eased the door open and they peeked out.  There was nobody there now – the fugitives had scattered as instructed.  Not too far away, though, somebody was weeping.  The sound was just barely audible.  They followed it down the hall and into a lobby centered around a life-sized model of some kind of space probe, with a big radio antenna mounted on a foil-wrapped body as big as a grand piano.  It was on a dais with stanchions and ropes to keep people from climbing it, but the Chi’Tauri soldier in the room was ignoring these.  It had one foot up on the platform, the better to loom over Ellen Ochoa, who was cowering behind the model.

“They’re _not_ the Avengers!” she was pleading.  “They’re just actors!  They play superheroes in the movies!  There are no superheroes here, and even if there were, I didn’t call them, I swear to you!”  She looked up into the Chi’Tauri’s face.  Its skeletal teeth were bared in a snarl, and the woman quickly looked away again.

She was trying to save her own skin, and the lives of her employees.  Steve could hardly hold that against her, but she was ruining their _plan_.  If the soldier seeing Steve in the elevator had been the death of it, Ochoa telling him they didn’t have any Avengers might be nailing the coffee shut.  Steve stepped into the doorway.

“We _are_ the Avengers,” he announced, conscious of how silly it was to say that while leaning on a crutch, holding a fire extinguisher, and dressed in a button-down shirt and chinos that were a good two inches too short.  “Stand down!”

Was that the right thing to do?  Or was it, as Peggy would have said, the act of a self-sacrificing wanker?

Chi’Tauri didn’t have much facial expression, but the Soldier turned to look at him, and did an admirable job of appearing skeptical.  Natasha and Thor stepped out to join him, also dressed in their stolen civvies and without weapons besides the nitrogen.  When Thor had walked into the museum in Oslo in his jeans and sweatshirt, he’d looked like a warrior nevertheless.  Right now, Steve was pretty sure they all looked like idiots.  Sure enough, after taking in the sight of them, the Chi’Tauri began to laugh.

“No Avengers!” it rasped, in between deep, guttural grunts that were entirely unlike human laughter but at the same time perfectly recognizable.  “Only human fools!”  It turned away from Ochoa hiding under the spacecraft, and raised its weapon.

Several things flashed through Steve’s brain in quick succession.  He knew he couldn’t take the plasma rifle out of the alien’s hands – its grip was too strong.  He could hurl himself in front of the weapon, to absorb the blast and buy time for his allies, but Peggy would _definitely_ have considering that self-sacrificing wanker-hood and he had to remember that this wasn’t his body to get killed in.  He didn’t have a shield to throw, only himself, a canister of liquid nitrogen, and a crutch.

So he threw those.  He dived at the alien’s leg as it moved away from the carpeted dais supporting the models spacecraft.  Off-balance and in the middle of taking a step, it tried to avoid him and fell backwards, landing on the model and breaking it – it was nothing but plywood under the paint and foil.  Ochoa managed to wiggle out of the way just in time, and crawled under a bench.  Steve, however, was pinned painfully between the alien and the edge of the dais, with the corner digging into his back.  Struggling, he managed to throw his crutch across the Chi’Tauri’s neck and squeeze, pressing the aluminum as hard as he could into whatever this thing had for a windpipe.

The surprised Chi’Tauri kicked and struggled.  It fired several involuntary shots into the ceiling, destroying the panels and bursting the fluorescent bulbs in showers of glass.  The sprinkler system went off, spraying everything with cold water.  Using its free hand, the alien scrabbled at the crutch, its claws raking Steve’s arm as it tried to get free.  He wound both arms around the metal, securing the crutch in the crooks of his elbows so it couldn’t be moved without tearing his arms from their sockets.

If the Chi’Tauri struggled much harder, it might do exactly that.

“Steve!  Let go!” Natasha ordered.

He saw her coming with her fire extinguisher ready, and he dropped the crutch and pulled the plastic satellite dish from the spaceship model over himself as if it were a shield.  Through that, Steve could hear a hiss as Nat finished what she’d started in Canada, and emptied the contents of the extinguisher into the Chi’Tauri’s face.  A white mist rose up around Steve as the temperature in the room dropped suddenly, and the spray of water hitting him from the sprinklers became pellets of ice.  He found himself gasping, unable to breathe as the cold fog filled his lungs.

He almost passed out.  Flickering lights danced in front of his eyes as he sank into an all-too-vivid memory of cold and pain and lack of air as the _Valkyrie_ entered the arctic water… and then somebody slapped him.

“ _Steve_!” said Natasha.

Steve opened his eyes.  He’d been dragged out from under the plastic dish and was now a few yards away, sitting against the wall while Nat shook him.  The Chi’Tauri was lying on its back in a mess of plywood and foil, covered with frost from the frozen sprinkler spray and not moving.  Had they finally found something that _worked_?

Thor raised the axe he’d taken and tried to drive it into the Chi’Tauri’s neck.  It bounced off, leaving him cursing and shaking his shoulder.  The alien was frozen solid.

“It’s dead,” Steve said out loud, not because it needed saying, but because he needed to hear it.

“I hope so,” said Nat.  “Although you never know – it might revive when it thaws out.”

That was worryingly reasonable.  After all, it was exactly what Steve had done.  He started trying to get up, and found he couldn’t.  His head was spinning and his heart racing, and his shoulders ached from how hard he’d been holding on to the crutch.  There were also bloody scratches down his left arm.

They couldn’t stay, though.  The other Chi’Tauri now knew not only that the Avengers were here, but that one of their number was unconscious or dead, and they would show up any minute now to investigate.  Back in his own universe Steve would have used what he’d learned fighting this one to take on the rest, but he couldn’t do that here.  He had to let Natasha and Thor help him, while Loki went up to the frozen Chi’Tauri and yanked the plasma rifle off its arm.

“If you want to be sure,” he said, “be _sure_.”  And he shot the downed alien in the face, taking its head clean off.

Kevin and Colleen had run around behind the dais and the remains of the model spacecraft to get Ochoa, who was now soaking wet as well as sweaty and dishevelled.  “Are you okay?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ochoa.  “I might never be okay again.”

“We have to reach the Chi’Tauri Leviathan in order to confront their Queen,” Thor told her.  “Do you know where their landing craft are?”

“In the green space, behind Old Mission Control,” said Ochoa.  “I can show you the way.”  Kevin and Colleen helped her to her feet, and she looked nervously up at Thor.  “You know, we’ve been joking about it all day.  Call the guys who play the Avengers and maybe they’ll get scared and go away.  I can’t believe you actually did it.”

Nat pointed to the NASA women.  “You three need to get out.  We can find the landing craft ourselves.  You get to the tunnels.”

“I can’t,” Ochoa protested.  “Not when my employees are still in here!”

“You can’t do anything more in here,” Nat told her.  “But once you’re outside the scrambled area, you can call Bob and Hayley and tell them to call off the broadcast.  Now that the Chi’Tauri know we’re here, it probably won’t work and it’s an unnecessary risk.”

“What do we tell them about what you’re doing instead?” Kevin wanted to know.

“We’re winging it,” said Nat grimly.  “We’ve wung it so far, we might as well continue.”

“Wung?” asked Steve.

Natasha nodded.  “ _Winged_ just doesn’t sound right.”


	15. Onward and Upward

The three women from NASA got back into the elevator, and the doors closed on them with a rather uncomfortable finality.  Steve only spent half a second staring at the brushed metal and wishing he could go with them, but even that was too long.  He couldn’t do that, not because of an injury or because of the limitations of a body without super-soldier serum, but merely because he could not be in two places at once.  There were some things, even at the best of times, that he simply had to leave to others.

The rest of them had to find the building Ellen Ochoa had called Old Mission Control.  There was a visitor’s directory map in front of the remains of the dais that had supported the spacecraft model, so Thor and Loki stood guard while Steve and Nat cleaned the bits off it and examined the battered surface.

“Okay, we’re here,” said Steve, finding the red dot.

“And it says Old Mission Control is this building here.”  Nat put her own finger on the map, a couple of inches from his.  “So we just need to cross this open area.”  She glanced towards the main doors.  There was a courtyard with trees outside, with the top of another building visible above them.  It was only maybe two hundred yards.

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy.  The sound of heavy footsteps through the ceiling overhead told them that the rest of the Chi’Tauri were on their way.  Instinctively the group clustered together, with Nat and the Asgardians moving in front of the injured Steve as they all edged towards the doors, hoping to get there before the aliens cut them off, but knowing they probably wouldn’t.

“It’ll be up to you, brother,” Thor said quietly.  “You’re the best-armed.”

“I know,” said Loki, hefting the plasma rifle.  It was clearly very heavy – the Chi’Tauri soldier had waved it around like nothing, but Loki needed both arms.  “We’ll have to take them off-guard.”

“We could do _Get Help_ ,” Thor suggested.

Loki rolled his eyes and shook his head.  “You wouldn’t have the strength.  Not in this body.”

“I bet I could, at that,” Thor said.

“We are _not_ doing _Get Help_ ,” Loki said firmly.  “There is no need.”

“What’s _Get Help_?” asked Natasha.

Thor began to explain.  “It’s a ploy we used to…”

“If you don’t stop talking I will shoot you,” Loki interrupted.

One of the soldiers burst out of the stairwell into the room, and the first thing it saw was not the little group of humans moving towards the doors, but the smashed spacecraft model and its fallen comrade.  Loki hefted his stolen plasma rifle and fired, but the weight of the weapon and his lack of familiarity with it got in the way, and he missed.  Instead of hitting the Chi’Tauri, the bolt blew apart the rest of the model spacecraft and most of the carpeted pedestal it had been mounted on, and the element of surprise was lost.

He immediately lined up a second shot, but the soldier did something with its own weapon, and there was a flash of glittering pink in the air around it.  When Loki fired again, the shot was harmlessly absorbed by this force field.

Steve had no idea what the word Loki barked out might mean, but it probably wasn’t something Queen Frigga would have approved of.

“Figure out how to turn _that_ on,” said Thor.

“What do you think I am _trying_ to do?” Loki demanded, studying the weapon in his hands.

Steve used his now slightly bent crutch to drag over the dish from the remains of the model spacecraft.  It had never been much of a shield in the first place, and now it was cracked and brittle on one side where it had been exposed to the liquid nitrogen, but it was psychologically helpful as they continued to limp towards the door.  Why did a space centre need such a big lobby?

“They’re going to fire again,” Thor said, peeking around the edge.  “Have you got it yet?”

“I am _working on it_ ,” Loki told him.

“We are _trying_ to save the world here!  Can you two stop bickering?” Natasha asked.

“No!” the brothers replied, in perfect unison.

The alien took a shot at them.  The bolt of plasma went right through the dish, burning a hole in it, and narrowly missed the back of Steve’s head.  The edges of the plastic cooled quickly, leaving them blackened and melted.  Steve rubbed his scalp to make sure his hair wasn’t on fire, then peeked through thehole and saw _two_ Chi’Tauri now heading towards them.

“Here it is!” said Loki, and the same pink shimmer appeared around them.  “Do you see,” he asked Thor, “how much easier it is to do things when you’re not thundering in my ear?”

It hadn’t been a moment too soon.  Another shot quickly followed the first, but was absorbed by the force field.  Steve dropped the dish, and they began moving with more confidence.

“Return fire,” Thor urged.

“It won’t let me while the force field is on,” said Loki.  “It would absorb our own shots… obviously.”

The front of the building was a set of big glass windows and doors.  A stray shot from one of the Chi’Tauri helpfully shattered these for them, in the process taking out a pillar that Steve worried was probably structural.  They stayed close to Loki, and stepped through one of the broken panes.  Steve’s limp was slowing them all down, but they couldn’t leave him or turn back now.  He wondered where the Chi’Tauri Commander was.  Hopefully not chasing down escaped NASA employees.

“I see the vehicles!” said Natasha.  “Over there, by the fountain!”

Steve looked.  There they were, two of the alien air scooters floating gently side-by-side, just as they’d been in the parking lot outside the Canadian convention centre.  Only a few more yards now.  They were almost home free.

There was the sound of breaking glass above them, and the Chi’Tauri Commander leaped out a third-storey window.  It landed on its feet in front of them and aimed its stafflike weapon at the group.  Loki held up the plasma rifle as if to physically shield them with it.  The Commander fired, and the pink field absorbed the blast, but it flickered and fizzed like an old television set.  With a yelp of pain, Loki threw the rifle onto the grass.  It lay there sparking and smoking.  The staff weapon was far more powerful, and the force field from rifle couldn’t take the blow more than once.

“Scatter!” Steve ordered.  “Leave me, just get there!”

Thor and Natasha darted off in different directions.  Thor simply made a wide circle to the left, back around to where the vehicles were, while Natasha took a more complicated, weaving route to the right, trying to be harder to hit.  Steve, who could not run, had no choice but to stay where he was, leaning on that damned crutch.  Easy prey – but if the Commander killed _him_ , maybe the others could get away.

He wondered what would happen if he died.  This actor, Chris Evans, would be stuck with Steve’s body.  Would he want to come back to this universe and resume his acting career, or would he be willing to stay in the other one and take over the role of Captain America in a much more literal sense?  Neither seemed like a good idea.

Then he realized that Loki hadn’t run.  Instead, the god of mischief and lies stepped in between Steve and the Commander, calmly facing his enemy.  The Chi’Tauri cocked its head and lowered the staff a little.  It must have orders to take Loki alive.

“Really,” said Loki, in a voice suggesting disgust but not surprise.  “You call yourself a warrior, when you’re standing here ready to kill an unarmed, injured man?”

Loki himself had shot the frozen Chi’Tauri a moment ago… but Steve supposed Loki had never pretended to be an honourable creature.

“You’re not here for these insects,” Loki said.  “You’re here for _me_.  Going after them is a waste of time and resources – yours, and your master’s.”

Was Loki actually _sacrificing himself_ to save _Steve_?  That was ridiculous – and yet as Steve watched, astonished, Loki held up his arms on either side of himself.  The right one was red, the sleeve of his jacket singed from when the plasma rifle had overloaded.

“I am unarmed,” Loki said, “and I am sick of watching these useless mortals make fools of themselves.  I assume you have my alternate captive.  If you will allow me to take my body back before I confront Thanos, I will come with you willingly.”

The Chi’Tauri commander stepped closer.  Tom Hiddleston was a tall man, but the hulking alien loomed over him, looking as if it could crush him like an insect.  “Two bodies,” it rasped.  “Thanos can kill you twice!”

Loki stood there a moment longer, straight-backed and defiant, then suddenly threw himself on top of Steve.  From behind one of the Chi’Tauri flying vehicles ploughed into the Commander, literally sweeping the alien off its feet and throwing it into the doors of the building behind.  The doors themselves were designed to open outwards, so the impact smashed their glass panes and broke one off its hinges, and that was apparently just a tiny bit more than the aging building could take.  The façade sagged, then peeled off the front of the building like wallpaper to land with an immense crash of glass, concrete, and dust on the pavement in front.  The other two Chi’Tauri, who’d been on their way out, were buried in the mess.

Thor brought the vehicle back around and reached to drag Steve up onto it.  “That was _almost Get Help_!” he said.

“I approve!” Loki replied.

Natasha had the other vehicle.  Loki climbed on behind her.  Thor pulled back on the controls to gain altitude, and Steve put his arms around Thor’s middle and held on tight as they climbed.  Against his better judgment, he stole a glance down  The three Chi’Tauri were picking themselves up out of the collapse, and Steve quickly turned away again as they raised their weapons.

“Far right!” Loki called.  He and Natasha were flying next to Steve and Thor, and Loki reached up past Nat to punch a button on the control panel.  The pink shimmer appeared around them.  Thor did the same, just in time – moments later, plasma bolts were bouncing off the force fields.

Below them, the ground continued to spiral away until the aliens were lost among the trees, and Steve tightened his grip on Thor as much as his aching shoulders would allow.  He felt terribly exposed, which may have been absurd for a man who routinely jumped out of planes with no parachute.  This felt different, though – he was basically balancing on a flying surfboard, with nothing at all to keep him in place and no guarantee he’d land on his feet.

Hayley – and Peggy – had made fun of Steve’s propensity for doing very dangerous things, but Steve had spent the last few years _learning_ just what was and was not dangerous for him.  He knew by now when he was likely to survive something, such as jumping out of the Triskelion elevator, and when he was not, such as crashing the _Valkyrie_.  There was a time for self-sacrificing wanker-hood, and now was not it.  Not when they had so much more to do today.  And if there were no time for _that_ there was _definitely_ no time to slip and fall.  He hoped Thor could still breathe.

The Leviathan passed overhead, and for a moment they were in its shadow.  Steve looked up.  He thought he’d remembered how big these things were, and it had _looked_ big hovering over Houston in the newspaper photograph – but now that he was up close, its size astonished him all over again.  How did this contraption stay in the air when it had nothing but those tiny fins, beating gently like the legs of an aquatic insect?  He remembered Loki saying something about an anti-gravity field.  Stark would probably be able to figure it out, but for some reason Stark had refused to work on any of the captured Chi’Tauri technology.

Steve wondered if the reason why not had anything to do with how the Leviathan looked horribly like a living thing.  The teeth in front gave it the appearance of having a blind head, and its undulating body structure looked like a spine.  The Chi’Tauri had built mechanical components into their own bodies to strengthen them.  Had they also knitted biological features into their machiens?  Or was this some kind of animal, perhaps a thing that had once swum in an alien ocean before the Chi’Tauri dragged it out and turned it into a war machine?

“Oh!” Natasha exclaimed.

“What?” asked Steve, but a moment later he found out, as the craft he and Thor were riding gave a sudden jolt and then slowed and steadied, as if being guided through the air by a giant, rock-solid invisible hand.  Thor tried to move the steering control, but could not do it.

“Don’t panic,” said Loki.  “The main computer is guiding us in to dock.”  His voice was calm, but Steve saw him re-arrange his hold on his fire extinguisher.  Natasha and Thor had theirs, and Steve was still carrying one, too.  They might all be about to need them.

Their vehicles separated and moved into line with opposite sides of the Leviathan, matching its speed and sinuous motion exactly as they drew closer and closer.  There was plenty of space as they backed into the docking port, but Steve still instinctively pulled his arms in.  Darkness closed in around them, and connectors shot out to hook into both sides of the vehicle.  The Leviathan was still moving all around them, while in the middle of it they seemed to be sitting perfectly still.

There, Steve waited a moment for his eyes to adjust – another thing this body did slower than his own – but even then, there wasn’t much to see.  The walls were very close in around them, and overhead was a tunnel made of overlapping rings so that it could flex as the Leviathan flew.  On one side of this was a set of rungs, very widely spaced by human standards but still obviously a ladder, that led up into the body of the craft.

“‘Fist bump’?” asked Thor, holding up a hand.  The inverted commas were audible around what he considered a quaint Midgardian expression.

“Sure.  Okay.”  Steve completed the gesture, then looked up again and took a deep breath.  “Here we go,” he murmured, already seeing visions of those plates suddenly contracting to crush him to a bloody pulp.

Climbing was a difficult, disorienting experience, with the walls moving around them and the rungs designed for a creature with much bigger hands and a longer reach.  Thor went first, struggling for a moment before he managed to get in time with the rhythm of the sinuous craft.  Steve tried to copy his timing as he followed.  His bad ankle continued to be very upset about his insistence on using it and threatened to collapse out from under him at any moment, but Steve didn’t trust himself to maintain his hold with only one foot on the ladder.  He’d managed to handle the pain of coughing with broken ribs when he’d had pertussis.  He could grit his teeth, and handle this.

Thor made it to the top, and offered Steve a hand to help him up the last few feet.  Then they tried to look around.

It was even darker up here, and very warm.  Steve’s hair stirred in a slight hot breeze that had an odd chemical smell to it, and there was the constant sound of things sliding against each other, making a variety of whispery or slippery noises as if voices were talking about them in the shadows.  The first image that occurred to Steve was of being inside a large, sleeping animal.  He squinted, trying to see something besides the occasional soft glint off a surface in motion, and then there was a flare of bright light off to his right.

It was Natasha.  She and Loki had climbed out of the tunnel across the hall, and she had turned on a small LED flashlight.  Steve made eye contact with her, and they both nodded.  So far, everybody was okay.

Now that there was light Steve could assess the situation properly.  _Around_ them there was very little to be seen, besides the moving walls and some spaces that looked like they were designed to store weapons or equipment – these were empty.  Then Natasha pointed the flashlight _up_ , and Steve stopped breathing.

For a moment he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, whether it was one creature or several or even which way up it was.  Then his brain managed to sort out the parts, and he realized that the being hanging from the ceiling above them, and flexing with it as the Leviathan flew, could only be the Chi’Tauri Queen.

While her soldiers wore only very basic armor, the Queen was covered nearly from head to toe in grayish gold plates with a matte surface finished, interrupted by embossed silver and multicoloured gems worked into shapes that looked like intestines, or like squirming maggots – wiggly, segmented designs that suggested biology in the most repulsive way possible.  It was obviously of luxurious make, far more decorative than that of the grunts, but still perfectly functional to protect its wearer in a fight.

Worse, that wearer was _huge_.  Standing, she might have been twelve feet tall, with two legs like tree trunks and four arms, one pair above the others.  She had four eyes, too, and was looking down at them from her cocoon on the ceiling, as surprised to see these intruders as they were to see her.

For a split second, nobody moved.  Then the Queen reached down, and tried to grab Natasha.

Nat responded by pouring out the contents of the liquid nitrogen fire extinguisher.  The Queen shrieked and snatched her hand back, steaming ice all over her gauntlet.  Then she lashed out again, with the lower arm on the same side.  She knocked the extinguisher out of Nat’s hands and slammed her into the wall, while pulling her cocoon open with her other limbs and dropping to stand in front of them.  The space inside the Leviathan was narrow and in constant motion, like being inside a heaving submarine, and she seemed to fill it entirely.  She hissed at them through her skeletal teeth.

Thor turned Steve towards the bow and pushed him.  “Go find the wormhole machine!” he ordered.

“But…” Steve began.  He looked over at Natasha, who was picking herself up, shaking her head as if dazed.  The flashlight was lying a yard away, and suddenly went out as the Queen’s huge foot came down on it, covering the light.

“You were the one who told _us_ to leave _you_ behind on the ground,” said Thor.  “The rest of us will deal with the Queen, as we planned!”

Steve didn’t want to go.  He didn’t want to leave Natasha behind, not after all the times when _she_ had refused to leave _him_.  Thor and Loki were not as strong as they were used to being, and they might not be able to handle this.  But the whole reason they’d planned it this way was because Steve was injured, which mean they were still _more_ up to it than he was.  It was too late to change his mind now.

So he turned and half-walked, half-crawled up the moving tunnel, like crawling up an animal’s throat or through the middle of a machine with many moving parts, towards the front of the Leviathan.  In the darkness he had to feel his way along, avoiding the holes on both sides of the floor that were meant for troops to climb in and out.  The occasional faint glimmer of light showed him racks further up where they could store weapons.  Some of these appeared to still have plasma rifles stowed in them.  Steve looked back, but between the darkness and the constantly moving structure he could no longer see the others.  He would just have to hope they could find more weapons on their own if they needed them.

Surely they would.  They were smart and observant, and it had served the whole team well in the past.  Steve couldn’t do _everything_ , even if he felt like he _should_.

He continued to stagger forward, his steps unsteady as the walls flexed and the ceiling and floor bowed up and down.  How in the world had Stark managed to just fly right through this thing?  Had he gotten his computers to chart him a safe course?  Or had he just gritted his teeth and hoped for the best.  Either way, Steve had a new respect for something that had been so quickly done and over with at the time.

Behind him were flashes of light, and the sound of plasma rifle fire.  That was good, it meant they _had_ found the weapons.  It was followed, however, by a human sounding cry of pain that nearly stopped Steve dead in his tracks.  He hesitated there a moment, then forced himself to keep going.  If he looked back, he might catch the Leviathan as it moved in just the right way to let him see them.  If he saw them and they were losing, he would want to turn around and help.  He couldn’t afford that.

At the very front of the Leviathan was the mouth, closed but with daylight seeping in around the teeth.  On either side of that were two more of the flexible ladders.  Steve dragged himself up the one on the right, and found himself in what he could only describe as the cockpit.

To Steve’s left and right were a pair of semicircular alcoves, with multiple controls above and below a holographic view screen not unlike something Stark might have dreamed up.  The screens showed an image of the buildings and trees below them, over which multiple small circles were swarming like flies.  Those had to be for aiming gunnery turrets, Steve decided, or some equivalent.  In between the alcoves was the main control area.  It had a wide panel across the front, covered with buttons and switches and a two-handled steering device.  Above was a big hologram showing the sky ahead, and several smaller ones on each side with other points of view, including one with a map of the stars.

That was a start.  The wormhole machine had to be in here somewhere.  This was where the pilots controlled everything else about the Leviathan’s movement, so it made sense it would also be where they decided what universe they were in.

Steve was working his way down the main control panel, trying to decide if he could tell what _anything_ on it did, when something crackled.  The large view screen shrank and moved down to the side, while another expanded to fill the space.  While the view ahead presumably came from some equivalent of a video camera, it was at first hard to tell what could be sending this one.  It was a view inside a room with office chairs around a big wooden table.  A group of humans, six or eight of them in business casual attire, were cowering in a corner.  They’d pulled some of the chairs close around them into a makeshift barricade.  The view darted back and forth, and then Steve noticed that the tip of a staff weapon was visible at the bottom edge of it.  He was seeing what the Commander could see, transmitted via the biomechanics directly from its brain.

An arm reached out and grabbed a man from behind the barricade – an elderly, balding fellow with a bushy silver mustache and reading glasses hooked into the collar of his polo shirt.  The other hostages tried to hold onto him, but the Commander dragged him out of their hands.  The staff weapon came up and poked into the side of the man’s head, and he covered his face, sobbing.

“Watch, Avengers!” said the rasping voice of the alien.

It was going to kill the hostages, Steve realized, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow and back.  It was going to kill them in order to punish Steve and the others for interfering in their mission, and there was nothing he could do about it.  He looked at the controls in front of him, wondering if there were some way to send a message, but he didn’t know what any of these devices did.  The only thing he recognized was the steering.

The structure of the Leviathan shook, as if something heavy were being thrown around inside it.  Steve hoped that was the queen dying, and not one of the others being crushed to death.

He couldn’t let the hostages die, though.  What were his options?  The Chi’Tauri would lose consciousness when their connection to the Queen was severed, but he had no idea how the fight was going and it might be going badly.  The only other idea he had was to get back to the ground as fast as he could.  Steve seized the steering handles.  It took a great effort to get them to start moving, but once he’d overcome that initial resistance they seemed to work smoothly.  He turned to the left and angled the Leviathan into a dive, heading for the building with the damaged front façade.  Rooms could be seen open to the air, like cells in a beehive.

“Steve!” shouted Natasha.

He glanced down, and saw her climbing up into the cockpit next to him.  There was blood in her hair and a big cut down one side of her face, with more blood staining her t-shirt.  “What the hell are you doing _now_?” she demanded.

“They’re going to kill the hostages!” he replied.

Nat probably would have had something to say in response to that, but then there was a crash, another cry, and Thor and Loki scrambled into the cockpit to join them.  For a moment Steve was reassured to think that if they were running from the Queen, the entrances were not big enough to admit her.  That thought was interrupted by a clunk and a grinding sound, and the back wall of the cockpit began to open.

Loki dropped the plasma rifle he was holding and grabbed a handhold in the wall, trying to force it closed again.  Thor, his clothes half torn off and his chest covered in bloody scratches, joined him, but they were not strong enough.  The Queen got one arm through, then another, and used her broad shoulders to force it open.  Thor and Loki let go and dropped to the floor on either side.

“Freezing didn’t work,” said Steve.  It wasn’t even a question.

“She’s got a personal force field,” Nat told him.  “Once she realized the nitrogen could hurt her she turned it on, and it can apparently deflect the spray.  It’s on her belt.”  As the Queen loomed up, Nat pointed to a big dark gem in the centre of her wide chain-link belt, which was shimmering pink to match the hint colour in the air around her.

“All right,” said Steve, “somebody’s gotta…”

“ _You_ gotta fly the damn _ship_ ,” said Natasha.  “Since you seem to think you can!”

Steve looked back up at the display, and his stomach dropped as he realized they were moments from hitting the building.  He cranked the controls back again, and the Leviathan headed towards the sky.  On the screen that represented what the Commander was seeing, there was a flash of motion, and the view turned to watch the Leviathan’s tail pass by the blown-out wall at the far in the end of the room.  They were still in there, Steve realized.  There were people still in that building and he’d nearly rammed a Leviathan right through it.

“Give me a lift!” Nat ordered – and without giving Steve a chance to reply, she grabbed him by the collar and started climbing him.

“Ow!” he said.

“Sorry,” she said, and found a handle in the ceiling, which she used to swing herself onto the Chi’Tauri Queen’s shoulders.

Steve let go of the controls to turn and watch, but as soon as he did, the Leviathan began to lose altitude again.  He grabbed the column to correct it, and realized that he was now stuck having to fly this thing.  The initial resistance he’d overcome to change its course must have represented turning off some kind of autopilot, and he had no idea how to turn it back on.

The Queen’s entire long torso was through the entrance, and she was trying to grab Loki and Thor.  They’d backed up against the walls to avoid her, but there wasn’t space.  Loki had his plasma rifle and Thor a fire extinguisher, but with the force field active these were little more than clubs to swat at the questing fingers.

Nat did a somersault, and landed on the Queen’s back.  The alien reached up with a third arm to seize her around the middle, and held her upside down, snarling in her face.  Her other arms continued to engage the Asgardians.  One yanked the fire extinguisher out of Thor’s hands.  Another slammed Thor against a wall – and that left one more arm for Steve.

They were all trapped.


	16. Through the Wormhole

The first plan that occurred to Steve was the self-sacrificing wanker one – he could crash the Leviathan.  That would kill all of them, but it would take the queen, too…

That wasn’t what they were trying to accomplish, though.  Their whole purpose was to get back home alive so they could deal with this using their normal powers and resources.  There was self-sacrificing, and then there was self- _defeating_.

Suddenly, something moved on the console.  The screen with the forward view shrank into a corner, and another popped up to take its place.  This was the point of view of one of the remaining Chi’Tauri soldiers, and it was looking at a tablet, being held up by a terrified but defiant NASA employee.

The image was of Ochoa, standing in front of one of the metal shutters in the Houston underground tunnels.  She was still filthy and sweaty, but she had washed her face and was standing up tall, with Colleen and Kevin on either side of her.

“This is Ellen Ochoa, director of the Johnson Space Centre,” she announced, “and _I_ have a message for _you_ , visitors from space!  You said we have no heroes, but you made two big mistakes.  The first was assuming we can’t make our _own_ interdimensional wormholes.  It just so happens that Dr. Kevin Farinas here is one of the world’s experts.”  Next to her, Kevin held up a page covered with drawings and equations.  Steve had no idea what any of it meant, or indeed whether it meant anything at all, but it looked very technical and impressive.  “You may have _some_ of the Avengers,” Ochoa went on, “but we have the rest!”

The metal door behind her rolled up.  Fog rolled out from underneath it, probably from one of the liquid nitrogen fire extinguishers, and a group of figures stepped out.  They were brilliantly backlit, and at first it wasn’t possible to see anything but their silhouettes, but those were, themselves, familiar.  The stuntmen representing Steve, Thor, and Natasha were not there, but Elizabeth Olsen was, and Jeremy Renner, and the man who played Colonel Rhodes – Steve had never caught his name.  It had to be Donny in the Spiderman costume, and there was Sebastian Stan, dressed as Bucky and complete with a special sleeve to represent his mechanical arm… and _Pietro_ , who must have arrived late but there he was, alive and whole and sipping a frappuccino.

In the middle of them all was Bob Downey, dressed in a tailored suit and red sunglasses that were perfectly _Tony Stark_.  He stepped up beside Ochoa and pulled the glasses off with one swift, dramatic motion.

“That second mistake she mentioned?” he said.  “That was assuming _we_ wouldn’t come for our team-mates.  Avengers?”  He glanced over his shoulder, and the others tensed.  Bob pumped his fist in the air.  “Assemble!”

With that, the video was over.

It would never work, Steve thought.  Even with the scenario re-written, the Chi’Tauri would know now that it was a bluff, a distraction.  Just for a split second, however, the Queen paused, cocking her head at the screen and trying to figure out what she’d just seen.

A split second was all Natasha needed.  She kicked out and hit the gem on the Queen’s belt, and the force field flickered and died.  Loki grabbed the end of the plasma rifle the Queen had taken from him, its barrel still in her hand, and pulled the trigger.  The bolt went right through her arm, severing it at the shoulder.  The bolt went right through her arm, severing it at the shoulder.  She shrieked and dropped Thor and Natasha, and Loki jammed the muzzle end of the weapon into the bloody stump and fired again, directly into the exposed flesh.

This shot went right through her and out the other side, spattering Thor with blue-black gore, and the Queen collapsed.  Steve had to roll out of the way to avoid her massive body coming down on top of him.  Natasha scrambled under the console and curled up, preparing to be crushed.

The giant corpse hit the console, slid a bit, and pushed against the control column.  The Leviathan rolled over and went into a dive.

Steve dragged himself upright again and tried to push her off.  Thor, on the other side of the body, attempted to pull.  Natasha, trapped under the edge of the console, joined Steve in pushing, and Loki dropped the plasma rifle and did the same.

“You cannot blame _me_ for breaking _this_!” Thor said.

“Don’t you two _dare_ start!” Natasha ordered.

Warnings blared all around them as they dropped, but the Queen’s body was literally dead weight, and it refused to move.  Steve could barely believe this was happening.  He felt as if he were outside himself, watching this all go on in slow motion from a million miles away.  They couldn’t have survived everything so far, from the movie set to escaping the police to fighting the Chi’Tauri, only to die in a stupid, stupid accident only moments after they’d _won_.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw the screen with the starfield on it.  There was an icon in the corner like a pulsating circle, stretching and relaxing as it spun end over end.  They had nothing to lose now, so there was no harm in experimenting.  He reached up and touched the icon.

It shrank to a point and then vanished.  There was a sound that rose quickly in pitch until it was no longer audible, followed by a flash of light.  A blue sizzle passed through the cockpit of the Leviathan, bringing with it a prickling sensation and a metallic taste in the mouth, and then suddenly they were weightless.

Steve had never been in zero gravity before, and it was a deeply disorienting sensation.  His gut told him he was falling, but the air around him was perfectly still.  Loki, who’d still been pushing on the queen, was thrust backwards by his own efforts and set spinning in the air.  Thor, pulling from the other side, could no longer keep his feet on the ground and had to grab the Queen’s arm to keep from floating away.  Natasha squirmed out from under the console and hung in midair, waving away gobs of blue-black blood that were now floating freely.

“I think I just activated the wormhole,” Steve told her.

“Oh, _really_?” she asked, her face perfectly, sarcastically neutral.

“Yes,” Steve replied, “as a matter of fact.”

The star map screen had now grown larger, to take the place of the front view.  Steve couldn’t identify any of the stars they were seeing, but he wondered…

“Do you think we’re back in our own universe?” he asked.

“We’re certainly not back in our own _bodies_ ,” Loki observed.

Like the rest of them, the body of the Queen was now floating gently, leaving the controls once again accessible.  Steve squirmed in between corpse and console to take the steering column, and flew the Leviathan in a wide arc, hoping for a look at what was all around him.  He was out of the habit of formal prayer, but in the back of his head Steve was murmuring _please, God, please_ … please let him find himself looking down at Earth.  His own Earth, where he was, or had once been, Captain America.

Stars rolled by.  Thousands and thousands of them, cleft by the soft glow of the Milky Way.

Steve’s hopes sank slowly.  It looked like there was nothing out here, just empty space in all directions.  Then something caught his eye.  For a moment he thought he’d seen a star move… then he realized it had winked out.  A few seconds later, it reappeared.  There was an object there.

Now that he was paying attention, he saw more of them.  There _was_ something out there.  Multiple big, dark, symmetrical things, floating silent and almost invisible in space – and the Leviathan’s computer recognized them.  Lines appeared on the viewscreen, filling in the details of giant ships with smaller companions, and cold terror washed over Steve as he realized they were approaching an armada.  There were at least six of the big vessels and too many of the small ones to properly count, and one that was absolutely _huge_ , hanging over all the others like a volcanic cloud.

And here were Steve and the others with their one relatively tiny ship, in bodies that had barely survived _four_ Chi’Tauri.  Who knew how many millions more were waiting for them out here.  Stark had said that he’d seen what was coming on the other side of the wormhole over New York… was this it?  No wonder the man was scared to death.  Scared enough to do anything, even try to use the Mind Stone, if he thought he could protect the earth from this…

“Steve,” said Natasha.  Her voice was wavering very slightly.  “Whatever you just did, I think it would be a great idea if you did it again.”

“What if we crash into the ground?” asked Steve.

“Then I guess we crash into the ground,” Nat replied.  She clearly thought that would be better than whatever awaited them here.

Steve reached for the circle icon, which had reappeared in the corner of the screen, but before he could touch it the starfield, which was now the largest screen, flicked back to being a side image.  The one that took its place must have been some kind of communications screen, and it showed another Chi’Tauri Queen even more ornately armored than the last one, draped with metallic cloth and, Steve realized after a moment of horrified incomprehension, much, much bigger.  What he’d initially taken for some kind of ornamental fence on either side of her was actually the tips of a line of the stafflike weapons, and the heads of the guards holding them barely came up to her waist.  She was nearly twenty feet tall.

Loki and Thor grabbed the edges of the gunnery consoles to pull themselves out of her line of sight, while Natasha grabbed Steve and did her best to tuck both of them under the main navigation so they would not be seen.  Perhaps they were not, but there was nowhere to hide the dead body of the smaller Queen.  It was simply too big, and so remained plainly visible, floating inertly along with its own severed arm.

More holo-screens flicked to life, and Steve heard noises as machinery began working.  The view of the bigger Queen vanished again and the armada reappeared, but this time it showed a blinking crosshair on an outer corner of the immense mothership.  For a moment they seemed to be standing still, and then Steve felt the walls begin to undulate, and saw more stars vanish behind the outlines of the ships.  They were moving towards the armada.

He glanced at Nat, then at Thor, then Loki.  They were all injured to various degrees, beaten and bruised and exhausted.  Nobody felt capable of another battle, but as Steve met each of his companions’ eyes, he saw that none of them were willing to just give up.  They would go down with whatever fight they had left in them… and that made Steve feel very proud of all of them, even Loki.

Loki reached out and retrieved the plasma rifle, which was floating nearby.  He checked it, and then nodded.  “Still has a charge,” he said.

“Thor,” Natasha said, “let’s see if we can find some more weapons.”

“I’ll try to disengage the autopilot again,” Steve decided.

He’d been able to do that earlier just by pushing hard enough on the steering column, so he tried that again.  It was much more difficult now.  In the lack of gravity he couldn’t push against the floor, so when he tried to rotate the controls he ended up rotating himself.  He tucked his knees under the edge of the console for leverage and then pushed as hard as he could, but it did nothing.  The mothership had control, and was not going to relinquish it.

After a couple of minutes Thor and Natasha floated back up through the tunnels, and Nat handed Steve a plasma rifle.  He could not gauge its weight while he and it both floated freely, but it did have a surprising amount of inertia.  Steve thought he could use it as a club as easily as he could a gun.  His arm was just barely long enough to reach the firing mechanism inside, and he understood why Loki had found it so awkward to aim.

“Where’s the force field switch?” asked Nat.

“Here.”  Loki showed it to her, on the bottom of the device.  “Just remember that it will not fire with the field activated.”

“Got it,” said Nat.

The mother ship was looming very large in the viewscreen now, like the Death Star dwarfing the _Millennium Falcon_.  Steve wondered how big it was.  It had to be at least the size of Manhattan.  If one of _these_ had come through to Earth, SHIELD’s helicarriers would have looked like mosquitoes buzzing around it.

“My friends,” said Thor.  “It will be an honour to die by your sides.”

“I would have counted it a greater honour not to have died at all,” Loki observed.

“Same,” said Nat.

Sounds both distant and loud echoed through the structure of the Leviathan as it docked.  Steve heard metal scrape on metal, clicks and thumps of things sliding into place, and then, with a final dull, reverberating _clang_ , the gravity came back on.  The dead Queen’s armored body hit the flour with a sound like dropping a bundle of pots and pans wrapped in a thick leather coat, and Steve squeaked in pain as he came down on his bad ankle, but quickly silenced himself again.  Everybody double-checked their weapons.

Something below them rumbled.  It must have been a door opening.  Perhaps it was the Leviathan’s mouth.

Heavy, leathery footsteps approached, very loud now that the swimming motion of the craft had ceased.  The ladders creaked.

The first soldier poked its head through the entrance on Steve’s left.  Natasha took aim and shot it in the face.  It dropped out of sight again, with a series of cries and thumps that suggested it had fallen on top of some of its fellows.  A second soldier popped up on the right.  Loki blasted that one.

The Chi’Tauri were not stupid, though – the next ones that appeared had their force fields on.  That meant they couldn’t shoot, but they also couldn’t be shot, and Steve and the others would have to take them hand-to-hand.  Thor tried Steve’s move from the foyer at the Johnson Space Centre, throwing himself at Chi’Tauri’s legs to knock it down.  This worked, but the next alien behind it grabbed him and held him off the floor by one leg.  Loki tried to hit one with the heavy plasma rifle, but the alien tore it off his arm.

It didn’t take long, just a few desperate, panicky, painful seconds.  None of them were in any shape to put up a meaningful fight.  Soon Steve, too, was lifted off the ground, and his captor snarled in his face.  This was it, he thought.  He’d failed himself, he’d failed his friends, and he’d failed this actor named Chris Evans, whom he’d never even met…

But the Soldier who’d grabbed Steve did not kill him.  It took his plasma rifle and threw it aside, then slung Steve over his shoulder like Santa Claus’ sack of toys and slid back down the tunnel out of the cockpit.  Others joined him, carrying Nat, Thor, and Loki.  They weren’t being killed, Steve realized, they were being _captured_.

Being carried with his backside in the air meant the blood was rushing to Steve’s head and he was getting dizzy, but he tried to think anyway.  Thanos wanted Loki – that was what Stan Lee had said.  Maybe he’d decided he’d take the others, too, for standing in his way of getting him.  Maybe it was the giant Queen, wanting revenge for the death of her smaller sister.  Either way, it meant they weren’t going to die _quite_ yet, and that was an opportunity.  All they needed was a plan.

Steve tried to think what they might do, but his body and brain were both on the verge of giving out.  All he really _wanted_ was to go to sleep.  That was the most frustrating thing about this entire stupid mess they’d ended up in, that he had the _will_ to fight, but not the _means_.  Steve had spent his whole childhood wanting to fight for something and not being able to.  After finally gaining the _ability_ to make himself heard, the last thing he wanted was something keeping him down again.

That was a perfectly normal thought process for Steve Rogers, but at this particular moment, something about it was a revelation.  Could that really be all there was to it?  Somebody had once said that people had two reasons for doing things, the good reason and the _real_ reasons.  There were all kinds of _good_ reasons why Steve didn’t like the idea of Sokovia Accords, but could that be the root of it, and of all his self-sacrificing wanker behaviour?  That Steve now felt if he _could_ fight, he _had_ to?  To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of that skinny kid from Brooklyn who didn’t know how to back down from bullies twice his size.

If Steve had known any psychologists, that would probably have been something to discuss with them, but he didn’t, and he was probably never going to get the chance to unless he could come up with some kind of plan.  He tried to force his brain back on track.  When Stark had flown through a wormhole towards a Chi’Tauri armada, he’d been carrying a nuke on his shoulders.  All Steve had was a body that wasn’t even technically his.  What would Stark do in _this_ situation?

Dumb question.  Stark would probably have built himself a new suit within twenty minutes of waking up in Bob Downey’s body, and he’d probably have a way to detonate it and take the whole armada along.  That didn’t help Steve a bit.

They left the Leviathan, as Steve had expected, through its open mouth, and stepped out into a broad hallway that stretched off in both directions as far as the eye could see.  There had to be a hundred craft docked up and down the space-facing side of it, their toothy jaws gaping open as if they were crocodiles waiting for some unwary fish to swim in.  On the wall next to each entrance was a tall, narrow panel lit up with symbols and images that perhaps represented some kind of status report.  Most of these displayed in pink, but Steve noticed that the one for the Leviathan they’d been on was blue.  Did that indicate damage to the ship, or the fact that it had the wormhole-maker on board, or something else entirely?

The soldiers carried them a few hundred yards up the hallway, then got into an elevator.  Steve was starting to hate elevators.  At least this one wouldn’t play music.

“If we are to be your prisoners,” Thor said, “might we know where you are taking us?”

There was no reply.

The elevator had glass panels in the wall that showed rings of sickly pale purple lights flashing by, perhaps to mark each floor.  Steve counted nine of these before one of the soldiers reached out and pulled a handle, bringing them to a halt.  The doors opened in layers, like a beetle unfurling its wings, and their captors carried them into a wide, low room with rows upon row of transparent tubes between ceiling and floor.  All of these were filled with thin gray fog, and some had a humanoid shape visible inside them.  This was the brig.

The soldier carrying Loki was just behind the one carrying Steve, and rather than slinging him over its shoulder like a sack of flour, it was carrying him bridal-style, meaning the two could see one another.  Loki had so far appeared to be unconscious, but now he raised his head a bit and caught Steve’s eye, and Steve saw him wink.

“Fools!” a voice boomed out.  “Did you really think your primitive prison could hold Loki of Asgard?”

The Chi’Tauri soldiers stopped and turned towards the sound – and there behind them, impossibly, was Loki.  He was dressed in full Aesir regalia, gleaming with gold from the tips of his boots to the top of his horned helmet, and striding confidently towards them with his sceptre in his hand.  Behind him, one of the tubes was standing open, the mist spilling out of it across the floor like dry ice fog.

“You forget!” this apparition declared.  “In _this_ reality I wield power over the elements!  I will teach you not to forget that power again!”

That was right – they were back in their own universe now!  Had Loki already switched back, or was this just Tom Hiddleston putting on a show?  Steve tried to look at the _other_ Loki for an answer, but the Soldiers holding on to both of them were facing in the wrong direction now, and Steve could no longer see him.”

One of the other Chi’Tauri raised its plasma rifle and fired at the new Loki, but the figure vanished.  A moment later, _two_ of them reappeared on the other side of the group, and laughed.

“Thanos only wishes he were a god!” the two said, in perfect unison.  Their voices echoed off the many surfaces in the room, doubling up over and over until they were difficult to understand.  “Now he shall see a _true_ god at work!”

Again, one tried shooting.  Again, the image of Loki vanished, and two more appeared elsewhere.  The Chi’Tauri clustered together, worried now.

More fog welled up out of the open tube, and began to fill the room.  It came up as high as the aliens’ knees, and Steve drew his own arms up so it wouldn’t touch him.  The Lokis held up their sceptres.

“To my, _my_ Avengers!” they said.

Three shapes emerged from the fog.  One was Thor, in armor and cape, Mjolnir in his hand, his long blond hair flowing behind him in an unseen breeze.  Another was Natasha in her Black Widow suit, her hair red as fire and her batons at the ready with electricity crackling on their tips.  The third, of course, was Steve himself, clean-shaved and dressed as Captain America with his shield on his arm.  All three of them had their eyes glowing blue, the same colour as the gem in Loki’s sceptre.  The same way Barton’s eyes had glowed while under the god’s power.

That was when Steve realized – it was all an illusion.  The only magic Loki was doing was manipulating light into shapes that weren’t there.

It was enough to fool the Chi’Tauri, though.  The images of Loki raised their sceptres and brought the ends down on the floor with a reverberating thud that was all out of proportion to the actual size of the implements.  The phantom Avenger vanished, and then reappeared in among the group of Chi’Tauri soldiers.  The Natasha spun her batons in a gesture the real one would have considered needlessly showy.  The Thor raised his hammer, and lightning fizzled over his skin.  The Steve prepared to throw his shield.

The aliens put down their prisoners and formed a circle around them – Steve, knowing what was coming, curled up on the floor with his hands over his head, and the firefight began.  Bolts of plasma and even a few projectiles flew as the phantom Avengers vanished and reappeared, delivered a blow and then flickered away, over and over.  Not a single shot hit its intended target.  Instead, the Chi’Tauri realized too late that they were shooting at illusions, and those illusions were placed to make them fire on _each other_.  As Lokis multiplied, cackling, and the other images flashed in and out, the aliens fell one by one until Steve and the others were surrounded only by the wounded and the dead.

Loki’s maniacal laughter echoed as the phantoms faded away, until finally only a single image of the god remained.  Then it, too, dissolved into silence.

The first to speak was Thor.  “Fine work, Brother,” he panted, as he got to his feet.  “Fine work!”

Loki – the _real_ Loki, still in Tom Hiddleston’s body – was lying on his back, his chest heaving as if he could barely breathe.  The lighting in the brig wasn’t good, but Steve thought he could see blood on the man’s lower lip.  “You can give me my _well-earned_ thanks later,” he rasped.  “Now, free our alternates!”

“Of course,” said Thor.  He grabbed one of the plasma rifles dropped by the dying Chi’Tauri, and went to check the nearest tube.  There was nobody in it, so he moved on to the next, until he found one he must have liked the look of.  He took aim and shot out a device attached to the base of it.

Natasha went to join him, but Steve was no longer sure he had the strength to walk, let alone lift one of the heavy alien weapons.  Instead, he went to check on Loki.  Whatever magic he’d just done, it had left Loki on the brink of exhaustion.  He was not only panting but soaked in sweat, with his face so pale it was almost gray.  Between that and his staring, bloodshot eyes, if Loki hadn’t been visibly breathing Steve wouldn’t have been sure he was even alive.

“Loki?” he asked.

“This body,” Loki wheezed, voice hoarse.  “Not accustomed… too much energy…”

“We’ll get you out of here,” Steve promised.  He had no idea how they were going to do so now that they had _two_ people who couldn’t walk, never mind that they would have to take these actors with them and heaven knew what condition _they_ were in.  One way or another, though, he was determined to do it.  Loki had now saved all their lives once, and Steve’s personally for the second time.  At least for the moment, Steve could put the Battle of New York behind him.

“You had best,” said Loki.

Something hissed and gave off an electrical smell, and Steve looked up to see that Thor had the tube open.  Out spilled a man in a long black coat, with dark hair sticking to his face and neck – it was Loki as they’d last seen him in their own world, standing in front of the rune stone disguised in Midgardian clothes.  He fell on the floor in a boneless heap, and Thor rolled him over and gave him a shake.

“Wake up, Tom Hiddleston!” he ordered.

The brig had excellent acoustics, probably on purpose – a prison was not a place where you wanted people whispering secrets – so Steve could hear quite clearly when a weak voice croaked, “Chris?”

“No, I am Thor!” was the pleased reply.  “My brother and I have come to help you.”  He propped Hiddleston up against the base of an empty prison tube.  “I shall free the others, and come back for you,” he promised.

Meanwhile, Natasha had forced a second tube open, and freed Scarlett Johansson.  Whatever kind of stasis the Chi’Tauri kept their prisoners in, it couldn’t be a comfortable one – like Hiddleston, she immediately slumped to the floor, coughing and gasping.  Nat patted her back a couple of times and took her pulse at the wrist, then went on to the next tube.

Thor next freed Chris Hemsworth, who staggered out sputtering and gasping but apparently in better shape than the others.  He was wearing the sweatshirt and jeans they’d last seen Thor in, although he somehow managed to look more like a normal person in them than Thor possibly could.  He didn’t fall over, but he did have to lean on his own knees a minute to catch his breath before he could look up at his rescuer.  There was a moment of silence and then Hemsworth said, in a distinctly Australian accent, “oh, shit.”

“No need for obscenity, Chris Hemsworth,” Thor assured him.  “We have come to rescue you.”

Hemsworth pointed at him.  “Are you…?”

“I am!” said Thor, “and delighted to meet he who was thought worthy to represent me on film.”

Natasha opened a final tube.  Out stumbled a tall man with a short beard and his hair dyed brown, dressed in a Brooklyn Dodgers t-shirt and a pair of jeans with a hole in one knee.  Nat grabbed his arm, and Thor helped her guide him over to the others.

“We must hurry,” Thor warned them.  “Collect yourselves.  The Chi’Tauri will be upon us at any moment.”

“Oh, my god, I wasn’t dreaming,” said Scarlett.  She was sitting up now, looking around like a caged and frightened animal.  Then her eyes found Natasha, and her mouth fell open in shock.

“You’re still not dreaming,” Nat told her.  “We’ll explain when we’re not in mortal peril.”

“I think I can figure it out,” Scarlett replied warily.  “I’m just not sure I believe it.”

Although they’d come out of stasis in a bad way, the actors seemed to recover quickly – maybe it was because they were in bodies with physical enhancements and powers that Steve, Thor, Nat, and Loki currently lacked.  Soon all of them were on their feet, except for Hiddleston.  He was still curled up and shivering as if feverish.  Hemsworth and Evans got him to his feet, but he just hung limply between them.

“Loki,” said Steve, squeezing the god’s shoulder.  “Wake up.  We need you to do some more magic, get us back to the Leviathan.”  They could hear echoing footsteps now.  The Chi’Tauri reinforcements were on their way.  There were probably a lot of reasons why magic was not the best plan, but it was all they had.

Unfortunately, there was no response.  The magic Loki had already done had simply been too much for his mortal body, and he was out cold.


	17. Remote Control

The brig did have doors, of course – huge ones, formed of multiple layers of interlocking sections that looked like beetle wings.  They’d rumbled shut behind the group as the Chi’Tauri had carried their captives in.  Now, to Steve’s horror, they began to open again.  On the other side he could see the glow of multiple plasma rifles and staves.  There were lines and lines of troops out there ready to get the prisoners back out of control.

Thor held out a hand, glanced at it, then looked at Hemsworth.  “Where is Mjolnir?” he asked.

Hemsworth shook his head.  “That thing weighs a bloody ton!  I couldn’t budge it!”

Thor had been so proud that none of his comrades could lift the hammer at Stark’s party.  Now he was desperately disappointed.  “You’re not worthy?” he asked.

“Of course not!” said Hemsworth.

“I have to do everything myself,” grumbled Natasha.  She scooped up a weapon from one of the fallen guards and turned on the shield function.  Scarlett Johansson crawled over to her and grabbed her leg, like Princess Leia in the very oldest and cheesiest posters for _Star Wars_.  Steve was tempted to do the same, but then there would have been nobody to guard the unconscious Loki.

“What is going _on_?” demanded Evans.

This was the first time he’d spoken, and it was a bit of a shock to hear his voice.  So that was what Steve sounded like to other people, was it?  He’d always thought of himself as having a higher-pitched voice, one that would match the skinny little body he’d been born with.  The one he heard now was deeper than he expected, and came from a man who was clearly scared to death.

“We’re about to be killed by aliens, that’s what’s going on!”  Nat tossed him a plasma rifle.  “Shield function in the button on the bottom.”

Evans caught it, looked surprised at himself, then turned it over and switched it on.  The air shimmered pink around him.  “Right,” he said.  “Nothing I haven’t done a hundred times while I was awake.”  And he turned and charged at the Chi’Tauri.

“Wait!” Steve protested, but it was too late.  Evans took off too fast to follow, and knocked the first alien right off its feet.  Others fired on him, but he turned around, holding up the plasma rifle in front of him as if it were literally a shield, rather than just the source of one.  The man had trained as a gymnast, Steve quickly realized as he watched him fight.  He was surprisingly graceful, but did not know his own strength – or rather, the strength of Steve’s body.  He put all his weight behind a punch when he should have saved it, and leaned into his kicks like a ballerina.

Was this what Steve himself looked like to everybody else, just rushing into battle without a thought for his own safety or anybody else’s?  No wonder Peggy thought he was a self-sacrificing wanker!

It was soon plain that Evans didn’t know Steve’s limits, either.  He was trying to take on the whole damn Chi’Tauri army at once.  The shield function on his plasma rifle soon gave out from absorbing too many blows, fizzing and sparking just as Loki’s had on the grass.  Evans then started using the metal itself to deflect the incoming bolts.  This worked better than Steve would have expected, but began putting holes in the side of the gun.  Somebody had to go in there and help, but Steve couldn’t do it, Loki and Hiddleston were unconscious, Nat was in no shape to fight and Johansson probably left all that to her stuntwomen…

Hemsworth cracked his knuckles.  “Right,” he said, and rolled up his sleeves.  “I got this.”

“How can you _got this_ without Mjolnir?” Thor demanded.

“Taika sent me a preliminary script for feedback,” Hemsworth said.  “I got this.  Evans!” he shouted.  “Or Cap or whoever you are!  Get out of the way!”

Evans paused with a Chi’Tauri’s breastplate in each hand, and watched as Hemsworth planted his feet and made fists.  He gritted his teeth – and to Steve’s astonishment, whatever he was doing actually _worked_.  His jeans and red sweatshirt transformed into Thor’s armor and cape, and electricity crackled over his body.

Evans quickly slammed the two aliens’ heads together and dived out of the way.  Did he know what Hemsworth was about to do, or only that it was obviously dangerous to be in the way of it?

Hemsworth raised both hands, and made a motion like pitching a baseball.  A tremendous bolt of lighting burst out, blowing the Chi’Tauri away.  The lights in the room went out in a shower of sparks, and Steve felt his scalp prickle and his muscles involuntarily twitch.  He tasted copper.

A moment later, reddish emergency lights came on.  At least half the Chi’Tauri troops were unconscious or dead.  The rest were fleeing.  Everybody’s hair was standing up in halos around their heads.  Eyes were wide and mouths were open, but nobody’s more so than Thor’s.

“I… did not know I could do that,” he said.

Hemsworth was panting, arcs of electricity still on his fingertips and the edge of his cape on fire.  “Okay, that might have been a little extra,” he admitted, and took a second look at Thor.  “What did you do to my face?”

Thor reached up to touch his bruises.  “The welts are from the jelly-fish,” he said.  “The rest is fighting with the Chi’Tauri since.  How did you…”

“Guys!” said Natasha.

Steve looked around, and realized that the situation had just gotten either much better or much worse, because the momentary power outage had turned off all the stasis cells.  All around them, creatures were staggering out, ranging from a ten-foot-tall reptilian beast with curving ram’s horns to a waist-high creature that resembled nothing so much as a duck in a leisure suit.  One bald being was wearing sunglasses and had a droopy mustache, and looked rather like Stan Lee.

The being that approached them was human-sized and roughly human-shaped and wore a long coat, and its entire body appeared to be made of a lumpy pearlescent substance.  “Who are you?” it demanded of them.

Evans came back to re-join the others.  Hemsworth’s lightning had scorched his hair, and he was panting and going to have a black eye, but he was alive.  “I, uh, I think we’re the Avengers,” he said.  “Earth’s mightiest heroes?”

Stark called them that, mostly sarcastically.  Evans spoke the phrase as if he wasn’t sure he _believed_ it, but was prepared to try to live up to it.  There was something both awful and comforting about that.

The pearl creature grinned, showing off shiny black teeth that appeared to be made of glass, and shook Evan’s hand.  “These here space rats have had me and my crew locked up for the better part of a month! He said.  “Shall we show ‘em what they get, boys, for messing with the Ravagers?”

“Yeah!” a chorus went up from the others.

Steve felt a smile spread across his face as he realized that finally, things were starting to go _right_.  “Okay,” he said.  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.”

The pearly Ravager leader looked from Evans to Steve and back again.  “There supposed to be two of all of you?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Evans.

“Yes,” said Steve.  “It’s a long story.”  He held out a hand, and Hemsworth helped him to his feet.  “All right, we have to get back to the ship we came in on.  I’m guessing you guys do, too.  Ours is docked down with the Leviathans.”

“They got ours in a cargo bay, up top,” said the pearly being.

“Great,” said Steve.  “You go that way, we’ll go down, and we’ll keep them busy on two fronts at once.”  Dividing the enemy’s forces was almost always a good idea.

“Sounds like a plan,” the pearly being agreed.  “All right, boys…”

From somewhere among the crowd came a sound like a throat being cleared, with a tinny undertone as if it were being broadcast over a speaker.  When the source stepped forward, it proved to be either a cyborg or just a robot, built originally to look like a beautiful woman but having taken quite a bit of damage since that point.  She’d been patched with scrap metal in several places, and half her head was bald, with only a clear plastic shell to cover the circuitry beneath.

“Sorry!” said the pearly being.  “Boys and Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three!  Let’s give ‘em the hell they asked for!”

The Ravagers got to work stripping the weapons from the fallen Chi’Tauri.  There were others among the prisoners who had not been part of the pirate crew, but the pearly being cheerfully swore them in.  They were all here because they were enemies of the Chi’Tauri, so they would probably get along just fine, at least for the time being.  When a second, better-armed wave of soldiers arrived, they were just in time to be confronted by two dozen furious pirates opening fire.  The one who looked like Stan Lee gave a weird, yodeling battle cry.

The Chi’Tauri returned fire, and while everybody else was distracted by the fighting, the Avengers made their way through the middle of the fray.  Hemsworth went first, trying to control the lightning powers Thor had been unaware of, and not always succeeding.  Weapons on both sides sparked and smoked as he went by, and Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three made a horrible electronic screeching noise.  Behind Hemsworth was Thor, carrying Loki, and Evans, helping Hiddleston walk.  Last were Natasha and Johansson, supporting Steve between them.

“Excuse us!” said Evans, as they ducked around and between fighting Ravagers and Chi’Tauri.  “Pardon me!  Coming through!  Can we just… thank you!”

“Is he Canadian?” Steve asked.  That would be an amusing irony.

“Only in spirit,” said Johansson.

They made it to the doors of the brig, and piled back into the elevator.  Steve reached out and pulled the handle, and they started moving – in the wrong direction, going up.  He muttered a curse and turned the handle around to pull it again.  The elevator stopped, and then went down.  Much better.  He counted the rings of light as they passed.

“Seven…” he murmured.  “Eight… nine!  Here!”  Another yank on the handle brought the elevator to a stop.  The doors opened on the Leviathan dockage.

There was a welcoming committee waiting to greet them.  The elevators were surrounded by Chi’Tauri, at least fifty of them with rifles and staves – and Steve had only just digested the fact that they were going to have to go through _that_ when the roof of the hallway began to move.  It separated into plates that rotated and folded like bizarre alien origami, until there was an opening big enough to admit one of the giant queens.  She stepped down into it.  Soldiers moved aside to make room for her.

They did have one advantage, Steve realized.  The opening to admit the Queen was on their left, opposite to the direction they needed to go.  “On the right!” he ordered.  “Our Leviathan is the one with the blue panel!”  What that actually _meant_ was no longer relevant.  What mattered was that it would be easy to find, and the queen couldn’t go that way because the ceiling was too low.

That was why she had the troops, though, and they clustered on the right, seeking to drive the escapees towards their mistress.  Steve couldn’t fight them any more than he could have on the way in, but now he had somebody who _could_.

“Evans,” he said, “get one of their weapons again, but don’t et the ones with the staves shoot at you, because they’re more powerful than the rifle’s force field can handle.”

“Got it,” Evans nodded.

“Knock their legs out from under them,” Steve added, “and don’t get killed, because Hayley Atwell will kill _me_ for letting you!”

“Got that, too.”  Evans looked at the nearest soldier, then somersaulted forward and used himself as a bowling ball to knock the alien over.

“I’ll get the big one!” Hemsworth said.  He fired himself up with lightning again, and took a flying leap towards the Queen, delivering a punch straight to her solar plexus.  She staggered backwards, but the electricity was dispersed by the metallic cloth draped around her body.  This clearly caused her some pain, and she tore it away, snarling, but she was not disabled.  She brought two of her four fists down on the floor, trying to squash Hemsworth like a bug.  He leaped aside just in time.

“Get at the seams in her armor!” Thor shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.  “That’s how Loki took one’s arm off before!”

This was like playing a video game, Steve thought.  They _had_ all their abilities and powers now, but they could only use them at arm’s length.

Evans had gotten a rifle, but a Chi’Tauri with a staff overloaded its shield, and he threw it aside to bounce off another alien’s head.  “I am Captain America,” he said out loud, grabbing a Chi’Tauri by the back of its helmet and slamming its face into the floor.  “I am fighting a million aliens.”  He drove his knee into another one’s crotch.  The soldiers had no genitalia, but it was still obviously painful.  “While a guy who looks exactly like me fucking _coaches_ me!”  He kicked a third in the gut, and it staggered backwards to knock over two others.

Hemsworth let loose another bolt of lightning at the giant Queen, but it was no good.  Even without the metallic cloth, her armor dispersed the electricity.  On her head she wore a helmet with a netted veil and a great deal of jewelry – the lightning was conducted over the surface of this, and absorbed into the structure of the ship.

“You’ll have to find an opening!” Thor ordered.  “A chink in the armor!”

“Where?” Hemsworth asked, as he dodged the Chi’Tauri queen’s fists and feet.

“Evans!” said Steve.  “Make one!”

“One what?” asked Evans, grabbing a soldier’s arm to re-direct its fist into the face of a fellow.

“A chink in the armor!” Steve repeated.

“Coming!”  Evans leapfrogged over another Soldier and grabbed a prong on the Queen’s armor.  He dragged himself up as if he were on a climbing wall at the gym, while she swatted at him like a mosquito, her gauntlets clanging against her greaves and breastplate.  Steve could only watch, wincing and trying to _will_ Evans to swing out of the way in time.  How could watching this be ten times more terrifying than doing it himself?”

Evans made it to the Queen’s shoulder and braced himself to wrench on her pauldron.  He gritted his teeth and his muscles bulged under his shirt as he strained, while the metal made a horrible groaning sound.

He’d also shut his eyes.  “Evans!” Steve shouted.

Evans looked, but too late – the Queen grabbed him by the leg and slammed him against the wall.  The soldiers ran to take advantage of the moment.

“Hold this,” Natasha said, shoving Steve’s entire weight onto Johansson.  She scooped up a dropped plasma rifle and ran to defend Evans.  Thor propped Hiddleston against the wall next to Loki and did likewise.

Hemsworth leaped to the edge of the open rooftop and pointed to the Queen’s bent armor.  “Is that enough a chink?” he asked.

Thor didn’t answer.  He was busy shooting at Chi’Tauri, trying to keep them away from the fallen Evans.

“ _Is that enough of a chink_?” Hemsworth repeated.  The Queen heard him and turned to see where he was, and he stumbled back a couple of steps as he realized she was on eye level with him.  Her giant hand reached to grab him.

“Yes!” said Steve, since Thor obviously wasn’t going to reply.  “Yes!  Zap her!”

The Queen yanked Hemsworth off his feet.  He pointed at her bent pauldron, and fired his lightning.  The bolt leaped from his hand to her flesh, and she shrieked in pain as she felt to the floor, taking part of the ceiling with her.  She twitched and writhed and some – although not all – of the soldiers were apparently overwhelmed by her pain and joined her in a collective seizure.  Nat and Thor dragged Evans out of the crowd of disoriented aliens, all three of them looking rather battered.

“Let’s go!  Let’s go!” Nat urged.

The hallway was now utter chaos.  For each person who could walk there was another who couldn’t, or who could only barely do so, and that meant that even with most of their enemies down, they moved at a snail’s pace.  Evans took an elbow to the face as they slipped past a Chi’Tauri trying to hold down a convulsing crewmate, and spat out a mouthful of blood.  Steve tripped over a fallen plasma rifle and went sprawling, taking Natasha and Johansson with him, and as he tried to get up another alien stepped on his back.  It was all he could do to keep from howling, and he was _sure_ he felt something inside him go _crunch_.  The women helped him up again.

Once they were clear of the crowd, a few Chi’Tauri who were still standing had the presence of mind to realize that their prisoners were fleeing, and tried to go after them.  For a second time, Nat left Johansson to support Steve and turned around to shoot down the pursuers.  They continued moving a few steps at a time in between one or another member of the party fighting for their lives, but at last Steve spotted the blue panel next to the Leviathan with the wormhole generator.  They climbed over the row of sharp teeth and into the mouth, and Hemsworth and Evans together forced it closed.

“Hemsworth,” said Thor, “use your lightning to seal it.”

Hemsworth put a hand on the metal and let current arc through it.  Sparks flew up as the mouth welded itself shut, along with a choking smell, like burning hair, from the organic components.  Both dispersed quickly, though, leaving the group sitting in the dark.  Steve could hear the others breathing hard all around him, and was almost surprised he couldn’t hear their hearts pounding as well.  His own was kettledrum loud.

It was only as his heart and breathing began to slow that Steve realized there were Chi’Tauri just outside, chittering to each other in an alien language.  He heard scratching sounds, and a few ringing _thumps_ as one of them knocked on the hull.  This was followed by the whistle of a weapon firing, but it couldn’t get through the Leviathan’s armor any more than Stark’s lasers had been able to in New York.

They probably had something that could, though.  It was time to get up and figure out how to fly home.  “Natasha,” said Steve.  “You had a flashlight at some point?”

“Yeah.  It’s here,” she replied.  It came on, the white LEDs impossibly bright in the dark space.  The light cast deep shadows on everybody’s faces and on the walls around them, and Steve realized for the first time that the Leviathan had a second row of teeth in the roof of its mouth, like a python.

“Great,” said Steve.  “Follow me.  You guys,” he pointed at Evans, Hemsworth, and Johansson, who had gathered around Loki and Hiddleston and were huddled there as if forming a ball to shut out the hostile outside world.  They looked up when Steve addressed them with worried faces, expecting him to demand something impossible of them.  He smiled in an attempt to reassure.  “Good work,” he said.  “Let us know if Loki comes to, okay?”

“Okay,” said Johansson.

There wasn’t really any way for anyone to help Steve climb up to the cockpit.  He just had to hang on and try not to put _too_ much weight on his bad ankle.  Worse, he now had the additional problem of bruised ribs.  They’d only just been healing from being thrown into the pile of metal chairs at the convention centre, and now the Soldier stepping on him had damaged them again.  Steve was sure he could feel torn muscles and cracked bones.

Nat followed him up with the flashlight, while Thor brought up the rear.  Earlier, the cockpit had been lit by the glow from all the holographic displays, but now it was pitch dark.  Nat shone the beam around, and it fell across the knobs and grooves on the control panel.  Some of these had been glowing before but now they, too, were inactive.

“There’s got to be a way to turn it on,” Steve said firmly.  “Thor, you got any ideas?”  Of course, there wasn’t any particular reason why Thor should know better than himself or Nat.  All of them had met the Chi’Tauri for the firsts time at the Battle of New York, and hadn’t seen them since until now.

“I have some familiarity with the vessels of the elves and the dwarves,” said Thor, studying the panel.  “I have never been inside one of these before today, but I shall see what I can do.”  He started at one end of the panel and began working his way down, examining the controls and touching things experimentally.  Steve could tell that his actions were not random, that he was being methodical and thorough in whatever he was doing, but had no idea whether he were finding anything.

“How’s it going?” asked Evans.

Steve jumped a little, and turned to see that the actor had climbed up after them – and _he_ wasn’t having any trouble with it, despite having taken quite a beating from his encounter with the Chi’Tauri Queen.  He reached the deck level and stood up to see what Thor was doing.  This was the first time Steve had been standing up more or less straight right next to him, and he was startled by how big his was.  Chris Evans’ body was above normal height and in great shape, but still only human in a way Steve Rogers no longer was.  Being _outside_ the super-soldier, looking in, was downright intimidating and Steve wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that.  He didn’t think of himself as a scary person.  He didn’t _want_ to be a scary person.

Evans had asked a question, though, and presumably he wanted an answer.  “Thor’s trying to figure it out,” Steve said.  “I think we’re all just gonna go back to Earth and have a good _sleep_ before we figure out what to do next.”

“How’s everybody down below,” Nat asked.

“Okay, I guess,” said Evans with a shrug.  “It’s hard to tell.”  He reached up and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, then inspected the skin.  Nat’s flashlight provided just enough illumination for Steve to make out the smear of blood.  “Shit,” Evans muttered.  “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

“‘Fraid not,” said Nat.

“We were disappointed, too,” Steve added.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Natasha wanted to know.

Evans thought about it.  “We were filming that stunt,” he said.  “I was trying very hard not to brace for it because Donny kept telling me to relax, but the last few times I’ve had to pretend I was in an explosion it was an explosion I was supposed to be able to see coming.  Then something blew up for real, and I got thrown into all this concrete rubble.  By the time I dug my way out of it there were these aliens standing there and they just grabbed me.”  He looked at Nat.  “What’s the last thing _you_ remember?”

“We haven’t spent the last week in stasis cells,” she reminded him, “but I assume you’re asking what we experienced at the moment of transfer.  We were confronting Loki in the museum where he was trying to use some kind of Asgardian technology, but Thor hit it with his hammer before he…”

That was the moment when Steve stood up straight and said, “shit!  The tesseract!”

Natasha’s eyes went wide.  Thor stopped studying the control panel and turned to look at Steve in horror.  Up until that moment, none of them had stopped to think about the fact that the tesseract would have been sitting in the ruins of the Oslo museum along with four actors very confused at finding themselves in a world they thought was fiction.  It hadn’t come with them, though, and Evans’ story sounded as if no humans had made it there in time to take it away… so it must now be in the hands of the Chi’Tauri.

“We must retrieve it,” said Thor.

Steve agreed with him – there could be no argument about that.  And yet… how were they supposed to do it?  They were exhausted.  Four of them had no powers and the other four had powers they could barely use or control.  They were vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and had survived so far only by being clever and lucky.  There was absolutely no _way_ they could just march back out there into the mothership and go get it.  The tesseract would be the best-guarded thing on the entire ship, and they didn’t have the faintest idea _where_ it would be kept.  The vessel was the size of a city.

Even so, Steve spent a few seconds wrestling with the idea, trying to figure it out.  There _had_ to be a way.  There was _always_ a way, and Steve had never yet given up on anything in his life.  Against aliens, conspiracies, armies of robots, or people he’d thought were his friends, he’d _always_ kept going, _always_ found a solution.  Right now, however… he hadn’t the faintest idea.  The thought of trying honestly made him feel ill.

Then he realized he was looking at Evans.  Steve’s eyes re-focused on his double’s face, and he saw that Evans was shaking his head – just slightly, and probably subconsciously.  After a moment, however, he swallowed hard, then straightened up a little.

“Well,” he said.  “I… uh… I guess that’s a job for Captain America.”

He thought Steve was going to make _him_ do it.  Steve quickly put out a hand to say _no_ , and Natasha took Evans’ arm and shook her head.

“You can’t do it alone,” she said.  “That’s suicide.”

“She’s right,” said Steve.  “We’ll have to come back for it.  Later.  When we’ve all switched back and can get some more help.  Maybe from Asgard.”  He looked at Thor.

“Yes, our warriors will certainly help,” Thor said.

“We can even get more of the Avengers,” Natasha added.  “If it’s not on Earth, the Accords don’t apply.  You can’t possibly do it alone.  Anyway, Hemsworth welded the door shut.”

Evans was so relieved Steve half-expected him to fall over.  “Right,” he said, rubbing his brow.  “Okay.  Good.  I mean, not good, but… okay.  I’ll check on the others.”  He climbed back into the shaft and vanished down it.

Steve leaned back against the control console, also relieved.  If Evans had run off to do the task despite everybody’s objections, they wouldn’t have been able to stop him – but at the same time, Steve was oddly proud of the man.  The terror on his face said that he’d known exactly how dangerous it would be, and yet he’d stepped up anyway.  Maybe this guy understood Captain America after all.


	18. A Deal with the Devil

Natasha breathed an audible sigh of relief as Evans vanished back down the ladder, then thought for a moment before going to follow him.  “I better make sure he doesn’t try to do something dumb,” she said.  “You still think he doesn’t understand you, Steve?” her voice floated up the tunnel as she climbed.

“No comment,” Steve said.  Leaning on the edge of the console to take the weight off his ankle, he turned to see what Thor was doing.

Now that he knew the tesseract was at stake, Thor had redoubled his efforts to try to get the Leviathan going.  He had taken a panel off the far right end of the control surface, and was shining Natasha’s flashlight into it, frowning as he sorted through what appeared to be wiring and fiber-optic cable underneath.

“Any progress?” Steve asked him.

“It may be,” he said.  “Fetch Hemsworth for me, if you would.”

Steve hobbled over to one of the tunnels.  “Hemsworth!” he shouted.  “Can you come up here?”

“I could have done _that_ ,” said Thor.

“I don’t want to do any more climbing on this ankle,” Steve told him.  Great – now on top of everything else, he was _whining_ about it.

Hemsworth’s head appeared in the opening, along with a hand swatting long blond hair out of his face.  “I hate the hair,” he grumbled.  “Next movie, I’m cutting the hair.”

“A warrior’s hair is a symbol of his strength!” Thor protested, shocked.  “It must not be cut!”

“Watch me,” said Hemsworth.  He gathered it back at the nape of his neck and tucked it under his cape to keep it contained.  “What do you need?”

Thor showed him the open panel.  “Here,” he said, and took Hemsworth’s hand to guide it to a place inside.  “Do you feel that two-pronged connector?  The one I have removed the casing from?”

“Yeah,” said Hemsworth.

“Apply a spark just there,” Thor told him.  “A _small_ spark.  Too much will melt and destroy the delicate parts.”

“And too little will do nothing, right.  Okay,” said Hemsworth.  He shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, as if about to get a needle at the doctor’s office.  For a moment, nothing happened.

Then there was a tremendous _snap_ that set Steve’s hair standing up all over again.  Lightning sizzled over the equipment, screens came on, and controls lit up, all of them fizzing and flickering.  The inside of the cockpit was like a pink and purple disco for a moment as static scrolled over all the displays, and the light was much too bright for people who’d been sitting around in the dark for twenty minutes.  Steve had to close his eyes, and when he opened them again, there were spots dancing in his vision.

It had worked, though.  The Leviathan’s systems were on.  The big guidance display was up, showing a diagram of how they were docked with the mother ship by a variety of hooks and probes.  Steve reached up and tapped one.  There was a dull _clunk_ and the pink image flickered blue before coming back, but the probe did not disengage.  The Chi’Tauri were not going to let them get away that easily.

Natasha reappeared in one access tunnel, and Evans in the other.  “You got it working?” Nat asked.

“Sort of,” said Steve.  He tried another of the docking probes.  Again, it made a noise and the Leviathan rattled, but the machinery did not move.  They were still locked in place.

Maybe they could activate the wormhole right here, and take part of the mother ship with them if they had to.  Steve found the starfield screen, but the circle icon in the corner was no longer pulsing or spinning.  When he touched it, it twitched, but nothing happened.  Maybe the wormhole could not be used as long as the vessel was docked.

“All right.”  Steve gripped the controls.  “We’ll just have to bust our way out.”

“Wait,” Thor put out a hand.

From down below came a hissing noise, and a panicked woman’s voice – it was impossible to tell if it were Natasha’s or Johansson’s.  “Guys!” she shouted.  “Guys, they’re cutting the door open!”

Could the actors take another fight?  Steve doubted it.  “Go help moves Loki and Hiddleston,” Steve told Hemsworth.  “I don’t think there’s room for eight of us up here, so find somewhere else to hide them.”  He hoped there _was_ somewhere else on this vessel.  What he’d seen so far made the inside look very sparse and utilitarian.

Hemsworth hurried down the ladder again, cursing as his hair came out of his collar and fell in his face once more.  Steve gripped the controls again, then his eyes went to another view on one of the display screens.  It showed down the side of the mother ship, and what had drawn Steve’s attention was that things were moving.  Above the row of docked Leviathans, smaller sets of doors were sliding open and lights were coming on inside them.

“If we bust out, they’ll fire on us,” Steve realized.

“It is a surprise they have not already blasted their way in,” said Thor.  “I believe they are reluctant to damage the mother ship in the process.” 

They would be much less reluctant once the Leviathan was in space.  “What do we do?” asked Steve.

Thor found another screen and enlarged it to fill the main viewing area.  His hands flew over the controls.  “If I understand their system of numerals correctly… our allies in the brig were Ravagers.  Let’s try one of their frequencies.”

There was a response almost immediately.  The large screen flickered, and then there was the pearlescent captain, with Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three on one side of him and the giant crocodile-like creature on the other.  Miss Alpha was missing an arm and Steve didn’t recall the crocodile having an eyepatch before, but it had three eyes so it could probably spare one.  The captain saw who was calling, and smiled.

“You made it!” he said.

“Yes, we did!” Steve agreed.  “Sort of.  Where are you?”

“On board our ship,” the pearly captain replied.  “We’re still in the loading bay but we’ve hunkered down in fortress mode – should be able to hold out six, maybe seven days until help can arrive.”

“Well… we can’t do that,” said Steve.  “We made it back to the stolen Leviathan we came in by, but I don’t think we can use our wormhole until we’re at least a certain distance from the mother ship.”

“The moment we leave, though, every weapon in the fleet will fire upon us,” Thor added.  “Do you know of anything we might do to distract them?”

The pearly captain cocked his head, thinking about it.  Miss Alpha leaned down to whisper something in his ear, and he grinned.  “Sounds like fun.  All right, folks – Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three’s got you covered.  Nobody’s yet built the system she can’t hack.”

The screen went dark.

For a couple of minutes, nothing seemed to be happening.  Then there was a fait sound from somewhere outside, an electrical _whirr_ like an entire room full of computers starting up at the same moment.  The ship began to vibrate.  Something moved on the side screen Steve had been watching a moment ago, so he enlarged it for a better look.  All down the side of the mother ship, one after another, not one but _three_ rows of docked Leviathans were disengaging and floating out into space.  The first few were fired upon, but then the shooting stopped as the Chi’Tauri realized it was a computer error, not a mass escape.

The wave of moving ships got closer and closer, until the one two spaces down floated out, then the one next door… and then there was a series of mechanical noises, Steve’s stomach lurched as the gravity turned off, and they were free.

Steve grabbed the control column, both so he could fly the ship and as a way to keep himself from rattling around in the cockpit.  The other Leviathans were floating inertly, unpowered and unpiloted, and they made for a dangerous-looking debris field.  As Steve watched, two of those further down the line scraped against each other, giving off sparks.  He hooked his knees under the console again and very gently turned the nose down, trying to make it look like they were drifting at random while also avoiding a collision with any of the other craft.

Nat rejoined them in the cockpit, and pushed herself off the floor to join Steve.  “Where is… there it is.”  She found the starfield screen.  “How do I know when it’s ready?”

“The little circle will start to pulse,” Steve told her.  “That’s what it was doing before.”

They drifted a little further.  It was very difficult to judge the distance in space.  Steve tried to keep his eye on the various outside views, and saw that some of the smaller ships in the fleet were starting to launch little delta-winged vessels, looking rather like skates or rays.  These would fly out and dock with the mouths of the Leviathans, allowing a couple of crew to board and fly them back to the mother ship.  This was clearly a tedious process, and one that would take some time.  Steve tried to move their Leviathan down relative to the plane the mother ship was on, to get more distance between them and it without looking like the vessel was under intelligent control.

“Anything yet?” he asked.

“It’s not moving.”  Nat poked the circle.  Again, it twitched, but the wormhole didn’t activate.  “It must have turned off when everything else did.  Thor, can you…?”

“I will look.”  Thor grabbed a handle in the floor to pull himself down, and removed another panel, this one underneath the main console.

“Look fast,’ said Steve, as more and more of the little skates flew into view.  The Chi’Tauri might have lost track now of which Leviathan was which, but when they tried to dock with this one they would find the mouth welded shut, and they would know.  Would they tow it back to throw them in the brig again?  Or just blow them to smithereens?

“Aha!  I know what the problem is!” Thor announced.  He pulled an octahedral object, made of what looked like splinters of crystal in a metal bracket, out from under the console.  “There is no power!  Like the rune stone itself, this device runs on the tesseract.  They filled this storage unit before sending the troops after us, and it must have contained enough power only for two trips, one out and one back.”

Steve cursed.  Every time they thought they were almost out of this, another problem was added to the pile.  “What do we do, then?”  They were back in their own universe, it seemed, but not in their own bodies.  They could switch back when Loki came to, but then the _actors_ would be trapped _here_ , the Chi’Tauri would still have the tesseract, and they didn’t even know _where_ in the universe they were!  Earth might be on the other side of the galaxy.

Thor touched the communications screen again.  “Our friends!” he said.  “We thank you, but it seems our escape is not yet complete.  We cannot activate our wormhole, as it is out of fuel.  Have you any more tricks that might assist us?”

The pearly captain of the Ravagers sat back in his seat and stroked his chin, thinking.  “Well, now,” he said.  “I think we’ve already thanked you for getting us out of those cells, and for knocking down the first wave of rats so we could take their guns.  If we’re gonna do any more favours for you, we’ll want a favour done for us in return.”

“I am a prince of Asgard,” said Thor.  “You will have your reward.”

The captain snorted.  “You’re not Asgardian!  You’re too short and too ugly.  You had a couple of them, though.  What were you gonna do with them?  Ransom them?  Asgard’s not big on paying ransoms.  They prefer to kick your ass and then make you apologize for them having to go to the trouble.”

“They are our allies, not our prisoners,” said Thor.  “Natasha, since Stephen cannot climb, bring Hemsworth.”

Nat went to one of the tunnels.  “Hemsworth!” she shouted.

Thor rolled his eyes.  “And what is _your_ excuse?” he asked.

Hemsworth scrambled into view a moment later.  “Now what?”

“Here!”  Thor patted Hemsworth on the shoulder.  “Here is your Asgardian prince!  He shall see that you are rewarded for assisting us.”

“Oh, yes!”  Hemsworth nodded, mimicking Thor’s accent and mannerisms perfectly.  “My, uh, my Midgardian doppelgänger speaks the truth!  You shall all be handsomely paid for assisting the son of Odin!”

Thor leaned to catch Steve’s eye behind Hemsworth’s back.  “Do I sound like that?” he whispered.  “Truly?”

Steve nodded, and wondered what he might discover if Evans tried to imitate _him_.

“The son of Odin, eh?  You _are_ big people,” said the pearly captain.  He looked at Miss Alpha, then at the crocodile, and waved for them to lean in.  There was a short whispered conversation.

“What’s going on?” asked Hemsworth.

“I think we’re about to make a very one-sided deal with some pirates,” said Steve.

“Very well,’ the pearly captain announced.  “Sit tight.  We’re coming to get you.”

He apparently meant it quite literally, too.  Only seconds later, with the communications channel still open, there was a tremendous explosion.  Thor found the screen that showed the view behind and above them, where the mother ship was visible, and enlarged it.  Something that must have been the Ravager ship had just burst out of the larger craft’s back like an alien larva, and its guns cut a swath through the floating Leviathans.  Steve had to make a sudden turn to avoid being next.

“Ah, there you are!” said the pearly captain.  He was sitting in his chair as if quite relaxed – it was Miss Alpha and the crocodile whose hands were on the controls.  “Get in close to us.  We’ll tow you out if we can just avoid their tractor beams this time.  Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three’s promised me an algorithm for that.”

“Okay.”  Steve swallowed.  He hoped flying this thing properly was easier than it looked.

He brought the Leviathan around and approached the Ravager ship.  As they closed in, this was revealed as a brushed gold vessel, shorter and fatter than the Leviathan, and a proper single solid structure rather than something that looked worryingly organic.  The Ravagers darted between drifting Leviathans and zipping skates to meet them, and when they came within a hundred yards, a series of harpoons shot out of the gold ship’s belly and locked onto the Leviathan’s spine.  The whole structure rattled.  Alarms blared, and Thor looked for a way to silence them but couldn’t find one.  Steve gently took his hands off the controls as the Ravagers reeled them in.

“Whoops, here comes a beam,” said the pearly captain.  The Ravagers swerved to one side, yanking the Leviathan violently behind it.  “You got those jump coordinates, Vark?  Will they fit in the bubble?”

The crocodile grunted.

All around them, the little skate ships were gathering.  These may not have had any weapons, or perhaps had none powerful enough to take on a Leviathan, because they did not fire.  Instead they flew circles around them, trying to force them back towards the mother ship.  Even worse, the Leviathans that had been retrieved were swimming in to join them – those _would_ have weapons.  Huge turrets on the mother ship were rotating, taking aim.  As Steve had feared, once they’d moved, they were immediate targets.

“Clench up, friends!” the pearly captain said cheerfully.

That was the only warning they got before space turned inside out.  One moment, the Chi’Tauri ships were all around them, and then the stars suddenly stretched and snapped back into different places.  The screens flickered all around them, and Steve felt as if gravity came back, pulled him in several directions at once, and then vanished again.  After a stomach-churning few seconds, the displays settled down again, and they were able to see what was outside.

There was a bit of debris floating around them, perhaps from skates that had strayed inside what, for want of a better word, Steve was going to have to call the ‘warp bubble,’ but otherwise they were clear of threat.  The Ravager ship was hanging above them with the harpoon lines connecting them to its belly.  It reminded Steve of a photograph he’d once seen in a magazine, of a hawk carrying a fish nearly as big as it was.

Below them was a planet with one hemisphere in shadow – or at least, it looked that way at first.  As they drew nearer Steve realized it was only, at best, two thirds of a planet.  Almost half of it had been sheared away along a straight line by some unknown cataclysm.  Yet, incredibly, the remaining part seemed to still have an atmosphere.  Steve could see city lights, and on the edge the sun was glinting off an ocean.  He might not have had Stark’s or Banner’s grounding in physics, but Steve’s gut told him what he was seeing was impossible.

Something in the back of his head observed that _this_ was what _awe at the blue vista_ felt like.  Steve tried to commit the sensation to memory – just in case.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Haven,” said the pearly captain.  “Don’t go too near the back side, they’ve got it propped up with a time dilation field but it’s still doing its damnedest to collapse back into a sphere.”

When Steve looked closer, he could see that the edges of the crack around the planet were glowing and molten.  What was keeping the oceans in?

“Hang tight,” the captain went on.  “I’m calling a friend of mine.  He’ll find us a place to dock.”

Hemsworth evidently felt that something was expected of him.  “You have earned the gratitude of Thor,” he said gravely.  “We will sing of your deed in Asgard.”

“As long as I’m singing of my paycheque,” the pearly captain said.

Their escape from the mother ship had been hurried, but finding a place to stop on Haven was much slower, and the pearly captain was apparently not interested in keeping them informed of his progress.  He got the two ships into orbit, then shut down the communications link so he could call his friend.  With the Leviathan still tethered, all those on board could do was sit and twiddle their thumbs.

For that reason, Steve, Thor, and Hemsworth headed back down the tunnels to check on the others.  They’d found themselves places to hide in the tubes that led down to the small scooters.  Hemsworth rapped on the edge of one.

“You can come out now!” he said.

One by one, they reappeared – Johansson and Evans hiding in one tube, and Natasha and Hiddleston in another.  Hemsworth went to a third and pulled out Loki, who groaned at being handled.  He appeared to be recovering, although he was still very pale.  His eyes fluttered open, and Thor drifted over to give him a squeeze on the shoulder.

“Brother,” he said.  “Do you feel better?”

Loki mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Excellent,” said Thor, and moved on to Hiddleston, who didn’t look very well, either.  “And how are…” Thor began, then paused and reached to touch Hiddleston’s shirt.  For the first time, Steve realized there was a brown stain on it, and also on his green scarf.  Was that blood?  Hiddleston was fully conscious now but still looked sicker than Loki, despite inhabiting a far more durable body.  What had happened to _him_?

“Was that always there?” Steve asked, as Thor touched the bloodstain.

“Probably,” said Hiddleston hoarsely.

“It was,” Johansson said.  “I saw it when we were back on the big ship.”

“Where did it come from?” Thor asked.

“My mouth, I think,” Hiddleston rasped.  “While they were questioning me.”

The word _questioning_ made everybody stiffen.  They could all tell it was a euphemism, and knew immediately what must have really happened.

“Questioning you?” asked Hemsworth, moving closer.  He was much more gentle than Thor had been with Loki, and it made Steve realize that Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston were probably good friends.  At least, they would have a solid co-worker relationship.  Neither of them had ever tried to kill the other.  The complicated and violent history between Loki and Thor was, to them, nothing but a fiction.

Hiddleston squinted at Hemsworth.  “Which one are you?”

“I’m Chris,” Hemsworth assured him.

Hiddleston looked from him to Thor and back again.  “They didn’t question _you_?”

Steve, Thor, and Nat glanced around at the actors, at Evans and Hemsworth and Johansson.  They were shaking their heads.

“Shit,” said Evans.  “Tom, what did they do to you?”

Hiddleston reached for the wall to steady himself, but that didn’t work in zero gravity.  Instead, Hemsworth put an arm around his friend’s middle and braced both of them so they could stay upright and face the others.  Steve observed that this was something he’d never expected to see – Thor in full armor, cradling Loki against himself.  It wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened this week, but it was close.

“I figured they must think I was Loki,” Hiddleston said.  He coughed a little and cleared his throat before going on.  “I thought I was dreaming, or that it was something like… what’s that movie again?  The one with the aliens who like _Star Trek_?”

“ _Galaxy Quest_ ,” said Evans and Johansson at the same time.

“That one,” said Hiddleston.  “But then they showed me to… to… to Thanos.  Somehow just by looking he could tell I wasn’t right, I wasn’t the real one.  He was angry, and the aliens were _terrified_ of him.”  He sounded as if this puzzled him, and Steve had to admit, the idea of terrified Chi’Tauri was an odd one.  “He told them not to come back without the real Loki.  So they figured I must know, and they put me in some kind of…” a shudder ran through Hiddleston’s body, and he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists just thinking about it.

Johansson grabbed Hiddleston’s hand.  “We’re right here, Tom,” she said.  “You’re okay.”

He took a deep breath.  “I don’t know what it did.  I just shouted over and over that I wasn’t Loki and I didn’t know where he was.  I tried to make myself wake up, but I couldn’t.  Pretty sure I threw up a couple of times.”  Hiddleston touched the stain on his shirt.  “They let me out for a while and then I could think, and I realized that if I was where Loki had been, then he must be either in the Rockies filming, or else at that Convention in Calgary.”

“Right where they first showed up,” said Nat.  “Of course.”

“I wonder how they found the right universe,” said Steve.

“It matters not,” Thor decided.  “Only that they did.”

They hadn’t felt the need to torture and interrogate any of the others, because none of them knew anything useful.  Thanos had only wanted Loki – or at least, he had at the beginning.  “Did they say anything about the tesseract?” Steve asked.

Johansson was horrified.  “This man is suffering!” she told Steve.  “Don’t go throwing more questions at him.”

“We need it.”  Natasha put her hand on her double’s arm.  “If we’re going to get you guys back to your world, we need the wormhole to work, and it needs the tesseract.”

Steve shook his head, though.  Johansson was right – he’d been premature.  “We can let him rest a little while,” he said.  “We’ll have to wait until Loki comes to, at least, so he can switch our bodies back like he promised.”  Steve still wasn’t sure he trusted Loki to do that, even after Loki had saved his life twice.  “Otherwise we’ll have to find our way back to Earth and have Wanda do it, but we’ve gotta get you guys back to _your_ Earth eventually.”

“Right.”  Johansson sighed.  “I wonder if they’ll let me quit.  The Marvel universe is a nice place to visit but I definitely don’t want to live here.”

“If it helps, we feel the same about _your_ world,” said Natasha.

“I like the bit where you have multiple options available for body-switching,” said Hemsworth.

“It’s always good to have a Plan B,” Steve agreed.

“That’s fun to hear from the guy who doesn’t even have a Plan A most of the time,” Natasha observed.

“I did see the tesseract,” said Hiddleston.

The banter had been on the verge of making everybody feel a little better.  Hiddleston’s statement deflated that at once.  All eyes turned to him.

“You did?” asked Steve, leaning closer.

“Yeah,” said Hiddleston.  “When they…” he cut himself off, and gave a high-pitched giggle that descended into a few seconds of coughing before he could finally explain what was funny.  “They _abducted_ us!  We were abducted by aliens!”

“Oh, no,” groaned Evans.  “He’s _never_ going to stop talking about that.”

“You saw the tesseract,” Steve prompted.

Hiddleston cleared his throat again, and nodded.  “When they separated us.  They took the others… I guess to that brig… but they took me and the tesseract to the big Queen’s room so they could show us to some kind of hologram of Thanos.  He said they would have to use it to get to the real Loki, so the Queen said she would keep it safe for him personally.”

“Did you see what they did with it after that?”

“No.  Sorry.”

That meant the tesseract was probably still in some kind of Queen’s chamber on the mother ship.  They would somehow have to get back there to retrieve it.  Steve had no idea how they were going to do that, but he hoped he could at least do it in his own body this time.

A sound reverberated through the Leviathan’s structure – a clunk, followed by a bang of something striking the outer hull.  Steve pushed himself back up towards the cockpit, and drifted up the access tunnel to find the large front view screen showing the Ravager ship pulling its harpoons back in.

In the lower right corner was the communications screen.  “Oh, good, there you are,” said the pearly captain, as Steve drifted into view.  “I got us permission to dock. Follow me.”


	19. Unsafe Haven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay, you guys. Life has been one crisis after another for the last couple of months. Hopefully things have settled down now and I can write regularly.

Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about landing on a planet that looked like it might fall apart at any moment, so he was relieved when the Ravagers escorted them instead to a dock at one of several wheel-shaped orbiting stations.  An iris-like airlock door slid open to admit them, and Steve very carefully guided the Leviathan through it and into the chamber beyond.  With the mouth of the vessel still welded shut, they disembarked using the scooters, which they parked hovering just off the ground between the Leviathan and the Ravager vessel next door.

The port was immense, forming the entire outer ring of the space station, and held ships of every possible size and description.  They ranged from the sleek golden Ravager ship to the spiny and organic-looking Leviathan.  There were ships too big to come in, which were connected to the airlocks by long tubes, and there was a matte-blue contraption no bigger than a Volkswagen bus, crewed by what looked like shiny red beetles the size of squirrels.

Steve should probably have been shocked by all this, he thought.  Here were more – and a greater variety of – aliens than he’d ever imagined meeting.  The actors were staring, some of them with their mouths wide open.  Steve himself, however, was mostly just tired.

The Ravager captain met them on the dock and looked them over, a smile on his face.  Was it just the way the light glinted on his pearly skin that made it look slightly mean?  “Seems to me,” he said, “that the first thing you folks need is a doctor.”

“That would be nice,” said Steve.  There probably wasn’t much anyone could do for his ankle after he’d insisted on using it for a few days, but he had plenty of other bumps and scrapes that could stand to feel better.

“A meal would be appreciated as well,” said Thor, an arm still around Loki.  Loki was more or less on his feet now, but didn’t seem entirely aware of his surroundings, and had not yet said anything intelligible.  “And my brother needs rest.”

“I ain’t your travel agent,” said the pearly captain.  “But follow me, I got a friend who can help you.”

Science fiction movies liked to make the insides of space stations all sleek and white and shiny, like Stark’s old house in Malibu.  This one looked more like the utility tunnels under the Johnson Space Center.  There were visible wires and pipes in the walls, and while the floors had tiles and the ceilings had panels, both were frequently missing.  Things leaked and dripped and hissed, and Steve began to wonder if they wouldn’t have been better off on the planet after all.

The pearly captain led the way, with Hemsworth, Hiddleston, and Evans as the most intimidating of the group right behind him.  Thor was helping Loki along, and Steve, leaning on Natasha and Johansson again, brought up the rear.  Loki was trying to walk, but his feet were clumsy and if not for Thor he would have fallen on his face repeatedly.

“How’s he doing?” Steve asked.

“He seems much improved,” said Thor.  “I find myself remembering when we were younger, and he would play sick, sometimes very convincingly, to avoid attending Father’s political functions.”

“I am _trying_ to save my energy,” Loki spoke up, his voice still a rasp.  “This body has a very limited capacity for tapping into the ambient magical energy of the universe.  I had to draw on its own supply and drained it nearly dry.  Probably comes of living in a world with no magic at all.”

“Aarflot!” the pearly captain called out.  “Aarflot, there you are!”

“Nacre!” another voice boomed in reply.

They had entered an area of the space station that seemed to be a hallway lined on both sides with what appeared to be buildings hanging from the ceiling.  Underneath them was a long trough of dark liquid, with machinery visible under the surface.  Flights of metal stairs led down from the buildings to the walkway, and coming down one of these was a seven-foot humanoid, enormously fat with a bright pink face and a little fringe of white hair around the top of its otherwise bald head, like a monk’s tonsure.  There was more short white fur on the backs of its hands and the tops of its feet, but its palms and toes were bare, as was its pink belly, protruding from under its shirt.  This being came up and gave the pearly captain an affectionate but still rather violent shove.

“What have you got for me today, Nacre?” asked the being called Aarflot.

“Two Asgardians and a bunch of I-dunno-what,” the pearly captain replied.  “They could use a doctor and their ship’s in a sad state as well.  Thought you could help.”

“Always happy,” said Aarflot, patting his hands together like an enthusiastic seal.  “Always happy.  This isn’t a place where we see a lot of your type,” he added, to Hemsworth and Hiddleston.  “Asgardians usually think they’re too good for the likes of us.”

“Not at all,” said Hemsworth.  “It is only that with nine whole realms to command our attention, we do not always have time for all.  I shall make an effort to visit again in the future.”

Thor looked like he wasn’t quite happy with that idea.

“Come, come with me.  Welcome to my humble lodging house.”  Aarflot motioned for them to follow, and they trooped, trudged, and limped as best their were able up the metal stairs into the hanging building.  This had looked small from below, but once they got inside they found that the structure actually extended far above the roof of the hallway.  A spiral staircase led up the middle, and creatures could be see coming and going.  Some of them, like the furry three-legged things running around in the corners, didn’t look like paying guests.

“Get yourselves settled,” said Aarflot.  “I’ll see about a doctor.”

In the small lobby – if that were the right word for a room with a concrete floor, pipes in the ceiling, and a little sales booth like the tiny cash desk in a Bronx convenience store on one side – there were some cylindrical objects that looked about the right height to sit on.  From a distance they appeared to be hard plastic, but when Steve experimentally lowered himself onto one, he found they had some give in them.  The others joined him, and everybody stayed close together, worried.

“I don’t like this place,” said Thor grimly.

“ _Really_ ,” said Loki, with more sarcasm than Steve had ever heard in a single word before.

“I thought _you_ were resting,” Thor said to him.

“I’m with him,” said Johansson quietly.  “This is out of the frying pan into the fire.”

“No, the fire was the Chi’Tauri,” said Steve.  They were definitely safer here, even if not by much.  “We’re hiding in the frying pan to escape them.”

“That’s totally reassuring,” said Johansson.

A few minutes later, Aarflot returned down the spiral staircase, followed by a human-sized being with scaly, olive-green skin.  This creature was carrying a metal box, which it set down on one of the plastic stools and opened.

“Who first?” it asked, in a voice with a bit of a hiss behind it.

“I nominate Steve,” said Natasha.  “His ankle has been slowing us down.”

“Hey, wait,” Steve protested.  He’d been a guinea pig once in his life.  He’d never regretted it, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it again.

“Don’t be an egg,” said the scaly creature.  It took a pewter-coloured, shackle-like object out of the box and adjusted some sliding parts before snapping the thing onto Steve’s ankle.  He twitched, but did not shout, as it dug into the swollen flesh.

The creature still noticed.  “What did I just say?” it asked.  “All I’m doing is stimulating your body’s natural ability to heal itself.”

“Like Helen’s cradle?” Steve asked.  The alien wouldn’t have any idea what that was, but Steve found the idea comforting.

“Does she call it that because it’s for scared babies?” asked the creature.  It moved the cuff up above the swelling, then brought it down again.  A sudden sharp pain ran through the tissues, and then it was gone.  After putting up with the throbbing for days now, the way the pain vanished all at once felt like it left a hole in Steve’s psyche.  The creature removed the cuff, and he was treated to the strange sight of the stretched skin sagging like a deflated balloon now that the swelling underneath it was gone.  He gritted his teeth and flexed the joint, and it moved normally.

“Thanks… can you do my ribs, too?” Steve asked.  Those still hurt.

“Oh, _now_  you’re happy to sit,” said the creature, with a roll of its large orange eyes.  It did treat his ribs, however, and then moved on to patch up various cuts, slashes, and sprains on the others.  When it came to Loki and Hiddleston, however, it paused.

“You two,” it said.  “I’m not trying anything on you two.  This will just sap your strength and you don’t have much of that to begin with.  Call me back in a couple of days.”

Aarflot nodded.  “You heard xir,” he said.  “You need to rest.  I’ll get you a room and have some food brought up.  We’ll even get you one with an entertainment unit, so you won’t be bored!  There’s a Bottle Tournament on Horva this week, and the games on Sakaar are always fun.”  He flapped his hands together again, not quite hard enough to be considered a clap.  “Come on, come on.”

He herded them up the steps like a flock of tired children, and brought them to a room on the third floor.  Steve had been expecting a slightly futuristic but mostly just dirty and depressing hotel suite, to match everything else they’d encountered on the space station so far.  It was a welcome surprise when the room turned out to be much cleaner than downstairs, although the linoleum floor was curling and the walls had a couple of weird stains.  The room was also less a suite than a dormitory, with four bunk beds down each side.  One of these had some fishy-looking life form sleeping in it, but the rest were empty.  A small round window, high up in the far wall, showed the blue glow of the planet below them.

“Get yourselves settled,” said Aarflot.  “I’ll be back in no time.”  He shut the door behind him when he left.

Steve sat down on one of the lower bunks and examined his ankle.  The skin was starting to go back to normal, and everything beneath it seemed to be in place.  Even when he poked at places that had been tender before, they didn’t hurt now.  Nat found a spigot on the wall and began washing the blood out of her hair, but everybody else just sat quietly, unsettled by the situation they found themselves in.

“They’re being way too nice to us,” Steve observed.

“I know,” said Nat.  “Captain Nacre must have promised them something.”

“I hope it’s just Asgardian treasure,” said Steve.  He didn’t like to imagine what else it might be.

“Does that mean we’ll have to go to Asgard?” asked Hemsworth.  “I don’t know if I could convince actual Asgardians that I’m Thor.”

“Most strangers, I’m sure, would not think to question it,” said Thor, “but Heimdall, who sees all, would know it at once.  If I come along, we may be able to convince him of the need to pretend, though it would be far easier to simply switch back first.”

“You _will_ be able to switch us back, won’t you?” Steve asked Loki.  Even if they hadn’t had the endless complications of their powers and strengths and knowing how to use them, who could be injured and who could not, Steve had been more and more uncomfortable with the situation ever since they’d released the actors.  Looking at his own body from outside, with Evans inhabiting it, was just _wrong_.  Of course, once they did switch back it might be just as strange to look at Evans, who resembled him so closely.

“Of course I will,” said Loki.  “Do you think I like being trapped in this festering mass of mortal flesh?”

“That’s _my_ festering mass you’re insulting,” grumbled Hiddleston.

“You can have it back the _moment_ I feel able to give it to you,” said Loki.  “Once I am myself again I will be able to do the same for the others without needing the recovery time – _that_ I shall leave to you.”

Soon Aarflot bustled back in with a basket of spotty, wrinkled fruit that looked rather over-ripe, and some bowls of soup with suspiciously mobile contents.  The group thanked him and turned down half a dozen offers of additional favours, and he finally puttered out again.  Nat settled back as if she were going to eat, but Steve saw her lips move as she counted to ten, and then she put her bowl down and got up.

Steve’s first instinct was to go with her.  Then he remembered his ankle, and stopped himself.  _Then_ he remembered that his ankle no longer hood, and stood.  He was still automatically cautious about putting weight on the joint, but it seemed to hold him just fine.

“We’ll be right back,” he promised the others.

Out in the hallway, Nat was inching down the stairs.  Steve moved to join her, but she shook her head and held up a hand, warning him to stay put.  She would signal if she needed him.  He could hear whispers drifting up, but couldn’t make out what any of them were saying.  Natasha vanished down the steps.

Steve sat at the top, waiting impatiently.  Logically he knew that Natasha rarely needed help, but he, too, wanted to know just how big a mess they were now in.  Too, the rest of them had all taken a turn forgetting that they were not as strong or resilient as usual.  What if Nat’s time came now/  He wanted to be where he could help her.

After a few very long minutes, Nat crept back up and took Steve’s arm to return to the dormitory.

“What did you hear?” he whispered.

“Nothing good,” she replied grimly.

When they opened the dormitory door, they found Thor in the middle of telling the actors what they’d been doing during their visit to the other universe.  He’d gotten as far as meeting up with Steve and Nat at the airport.

“They were not alone,” he was saying.  “They had Robert Downey Junior with them.”

“Oh, _no_ ,” groaned Evans.  “Bob’s going to give us hell about this for the rest of our lives!”

“You should not disrespect him,” said Thor.  “He is a brave man in his own way, who has done much good in the world.”

“I know,” sighed Evans, “but he’s also a tease.  You should hear him when he decides to ‘advise’ me on my ‘life choices’.”

“We can probably imagine it,” said Nat, sitting down again.  She reached to take one of the wrinkly fruits out of the bowl.  The others seemed to have decided that the best way to eat these was to squeeze them until the sides split, and then suck out the applesauce-like interior.  Steve tried it himself, prepared for something horrible, but the pulp turned out to be both tart and sweet, something like rhubarb with a lot of sugar, but a texture more like a soft pear.  It was unfamiliar, but in no way inedible.

“What did you learn?” Thor asked.

“Aarflot was talking to Captain Nacre again,” Natasha said.  “The Captain was telling him how we stole a Leviathan, which Aarflot seemed to find impressive, but then he added that we have some kind of wormhole drive on board.  They agreed it couldn’t be a normal Chi’Tauri hyperdrive because that’s too big to fit in the Leviathan, which is a short-range ship anyway.  So it must be something new and unusual.”

Steve groaned – he could tell where this was going.  “They’re going to sell our ship out from under us?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” said Nat.  “So no matter how tempting it may be after the past couple of days, we can’t afford to stop and sit.  We need a plan to get the Leviathan back.”

She looked at Steve.  He opened his mouth to protest that Nat always thought his plans were terrible, but then he realized everybody _else_ was looking at him, too, with that same expression people always wore when they were assuming he was in charge.  Even Evans, who should have known better if anybody did, was waiting for Steve to say something.  Why did everybody always assume Steve was the ideas guy?  His ideas included joining the army as a ninety-eight pound asthmatic, walking home from Austria with a dozen prisoners of war, and repeatedly jumping out of planes without a parachute.

“Well,” he said, thinking aloud, “the _last_ time we were stuck in a hotel with aliens who wanted to kill us, we went out the window, but we can’t do that here because we’re in space.”  And they’d seen no sign that the building even _had_ elevators, which had to be against some kind of regulation, even in space.  “Aarflot’s probably keeping us here while the Captain finds a buyer for the Leviathan, so we have to distract him and slip out.”

“Then what?” asked Nat.  “We can’t go anywhere.  Leviathans are short-range ships  I don’t know what that means in space travel terms, but I doubt it’ll get us to Earth.  We’d need the wormhole to go anywhere further, and for that we need the tesseract, which is probably light-years away with the Chi’Tauri.”

“We could go to Asgard!” Hemsworth suggested.  He turned to Thor.  “Heimdall sees everything, right?  One of you two must know how to call for him.”  He pointed at Thor, then at Loki, then back at Thor again.  “We’ll explain to him what’s going on, and the Asgardians can help us get the tesseract back.”

Thor shook his head.  “While we’re gone, the pirates here may dismantle or destroy the Leviathan.  That is a risk we cannot take.  Besides which, Asgard does not tangle with Thanos, nor he with us.  To do so would start a war neither side could support.”

Nobody had realized that, and all were disappointed.  “So… no help from Asgard,” said Evans.

“We’re gonna need somebody to keep the Chi’Tauri busy while we go for the tesseract,” said Steve.  “The Ravagers won’t help us unless we can pay them for it, and I’m not sure even Asgard can afford to pay off _all_ of them.  We’re going to have to get help from _somewhere_ , but…” he stopped as his train of thought shifted onto a side track.  The Ravagers wouldn’t help willingly, but they would have to defend themselves if there were some kind of threat.  “Okay,” he said.  “Okay, wait, I think I have an idea.”

“Uh-oh,” said Natasha.

“Don’t uh-oh,” Steve told her.  “A moment ago you were waiting for me to come up with something.  Give me a minute to think.”

The idea crystallized slowly, piece by piece.  It was probably a terrible plan – Peggy Carter might have called it suicidal and Hayley Atwell _definitely_ would.  He’d be risking all their lives… but then, _any_ attempt to get the tesseract back from the Chi’Tauri would be a terrible risk.  There wouldn’t be a second chance if they got it wrong, but second chances were a luxury the Avengers rarely had.  Besides, they were back now in a universe where they knew the rules.  That would hopefully help.

“Well?” Nat said.  “What’s the idea?”

Steve told them.  He expected her to reply that it was his worst idea ever, but instead, the first person to offer an opinion was Loki.

“I’m not doing it,” he said.

“It worked for the Guardians of the Galaxy,” Hemsworth said.

“No, it didn’t!” Johansson told him.  “Did you even _watch_ that movie?”

“Who are the Guardians of the Galaxy?” Steve wanted to know.

“You haven’t met them yet,” said Evans.  “You probably won’t like them.”

“Does anybody have a _better_ idea?” Steve wanted to know.  He was fully open to better ideas.

Thor poked his brother.  “Loki, if you refuse to be present in person, perhaps you could cast an illusion of…”

“I’m saving my strength to switch our bodies back, remember?” Loki asked.  “If you wish to delay that, by all means, ask me to do card tricks in the mean time!  I will have no part of it.”

Nat thought for a moment.  “I might… I’m not sure it’s actually a better idea, but it may be an improved variation.”

“Will it still use me as bait?” Loki wanted to know.

“No,” said Nat, “but we’ll need one of the Ravagers to cooperate.  Don’t worry, whoever it is, they don’t have to be willing.”

Loki nodded.  “We’ll go with her idea,” he said.

“Either way, the first step is to get out of here,” Nat said.  She got up again, and wiped mushy fruit innards off her fingers onto her shirt.  “Which I’m happy to do, because this is the shiftiest hotel I have ever been in, and I’ve been to Times Square in the 80’s.”

Johansson looked intrigued.  “Is that because of the thing from the comics, where you’re way older than you look?” she asked.

“No,” said Natasha.  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Well, rats,” said Johansson.  “That probably means the writers will _never_ let me kiss Sebastian Stan.”

“You should probably talk to Sebastian about that,” said Steve.

They left the room again and started down the stairs in a group, with the post powerful members of the party in the lead.  That way if they were challenged, Hemsworth and Evans could hopefully handle whatever form that challenge took.  Behind them, Steve, Thor, Natasha, and Johansson clustered close to Loki and Hiddleston, who were still the ones in greatest need of protection.

Aarflot was back in the lobby.  He was now behind the little counter, and since Steve couldn’t see a door that led to that area, he couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten there – Aarflot was surely much too big to climb through the little window.  He was chatting with Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three, who had a new arm now, though it didn’t match any of her other parts.

“Begging your pardon, Sweet-Beeps,” said Aarflot.  “Our guests are here.  Did you fine people need anything?” he asked.  His face was all smiles and his voice all helpfulness, but there was still a definite impression that he wanted them to know they’d been _seen_.

“Ah, Master Aarflot,” said Hemsworth, stepping forward.  “I did have one question.”

“What can I do for my honoured guest?” Aarflot wanted to know

“I know little as yet of the practices in Haven,” Hemsworth said, “but in Asgard – and indeed, on my friends’ world of Earth – it is considered unseemly that a prince should share his lodgings with so many others.  My brother’s company I do not mind, and I can stretch to accept our companions, but must there be strangers?”

“I _know_ I don’t sound like _that_ ,” Thor muttered.

Aarflot seemed confused a moment, then brightened.  “You mean Fishlips?” he asked.  “She’s harmless.  She’s hibernating, actually.  Won’t be up for weeks yet.”

“I do not begrudge the Lady Fishlips a place to sleep,” Hemsworth assured him, “but I would rather not be in the same room with her.  Have you nothing more private?”

“You’ve clearly never been on a space station before, if you think we have much privacy,” Aarflot told him.  “Maybe I can hang some curtains around her bed or something…”

With Hemsworth’s broad shoulders to fill the space around the little counter where Aarflot was, and with Evans standing next to him so Miss Alpha couldn’t see, either, the others started to creep by one by one.  What they hadn’t bargained on, but probably should have, was Aarflot having accomplices.  Nat made it to the door and eased it open, and immediately heard an excited cry from outside.

“It’s them!” a high-pitched voice exclaimed.

There must have been a crowd waiting, because Nat had to stumble back from the door very quickly as at least a dozen people came surging up the steps at once.  There were aliens of every description, from those who looked almost entirely human to things on which Steve couldn’t even identify an obvious head, all climbing over and pushing past each other to get inside.  Any hope Steve might have had that this crowd wasn’t there for _them_ was quickly quashed.  Actors and Avengers formed a tight group at the bottom of the spiral steps as their new fans gathered around them.

“Did you really steal a Leviathan?” a short, furry creature asked.

“Just… what, ten of you?” another individual asked.  This one would have looked more human if it hadn’t been for the extra set of arms.

“Eight,” said Steve, holding up his hands in honest fear that the crowd would crush him.

“Eight!  Just _eight_ of you against a whole hive!”  A banana-yellow woman, complete with the sort of black spots a ripe banana would have, and sporting yarn-like white hair, crushed herself up against Evans and put her arms around his neck.  “How did you manage it?”

“Uh.”  Evans looked at Steve.  “Teamwork.  And  Um.  Sit-ups.  Lots of sit-ups.”

This man was an _actor_?  Steve turned away from him, and found himself looking right at Aarflot.  Their host had a satisfied smile on his face.  So did Miss Alpha at his side, and Steve was absolutely _sure_ they’d done this on purpose.  The party couldn’t leave the hotel if they were going to be mobbed the moment they stepped outside.

“My name is Musa,” said the banana woman.  “What’s yours.”

“Chris,” said Evans.  “I mean Steve!  Can you… can you excuse us?”

Aarflot stamped his feet, shaking the whole building.  “Now, now, everybody!” he said, emerging through the crowd – Steve had missed how he’d gotten out from behind the desk, meaning he would probably now never know.  “Our guests are very tired.  I’m sure defeating an entire Chi’Tauri hive is very hard work!  They need rest and, importantly, privacy!  Isn’t that what Prince Thor came to ask me about?”  He smiled at Hemsworth – a smile with a bit of triumph behind it.

“Verily,” said Hemsworth.

“Then we’d better make some appropriate arrangements,” Aarflot said.  “All of you, come with me.  Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three, could you hold back the baying mob, please?”

Miss Alpha held up the arm she _hadn’t_ recently replaced, and the hand bent back at an unnatural angle, exposing what was definitely the muzzle of some kind of weapon.  People moved back.

“That’s better,” said Aarflot, and shooed them up the stairs.  “Come now.  Let’s find you that _privacy_ you wanted.”


	20. Stan Lee Cameo Redux

Aarflot shooed them back into their room, and this time there was an ominous _click_ after he shut the door.  Steve immediately went up to rattle the handle and sure enough, it was locked.  He turned to Evans and gestured to the door, inviting him to knock it down.  Evans nodded, and approached to give it a kick.

“Hold your horses,” said Natasha.  She gently moved between the men and the door, and lay down to peek through the gap beneath it.

“He’s still there,” she said, and then after a moment added, “no, he’s leaving now, but there’s a couple of others.  One has seven toes, the other has dinosaur feet.  I can’t see the rest of their bodies but I’m guessing they’re at _least_ as big as Aarflot.”

“Just two?” asked Steve.  “We can take two.”

“Of course we can,” said Nat, “but when we get to the bottom of the stairs there’ll probably still be a crowd there.  Well-meaning fans who only know we did something cool, and have no ill intentions towards us.”

Steve sighed, because she was right – they could beat up bad guys all day, but not innocent bystanders.  Those were the sort of people who got hurt by accident while the Avengers were after somebody else, the very people the Sokovia Accords were designed, however misguidedly, to protect.  They couldn’t fight their way through those, and Aarflot and Nacre were probably counting on it.

“We could _ask_ them to leave us alone,” Steve suggested.

“Has that ever worked for _human_ fans?” Nat asked, eyebrows raised.

Sometimes it did.  Often it didn’t, and the sheer _number_ of people who’d been waiting for them in the street suggested that news traveled very fast on this station.  That meant the locals knew not just about them, but about the Leviathan as well.  Somebody might already be taking it apart or selling it.  They didn’t have time to sit here.

“Then we need to search the room and find another way out,” Steve decided.  “If worst comes to worst I guess we’ll have to push our way through, but let’s explore other options first.”

They began looking around.  There were vents up by the ceiling that blew a cool breeze into the room, but they were far too small for anyone to squeeze through, even Natasha.  The window had a handle on it with some red writing in an alien script, suggesting that it could be opened in an emergency, but there was nothing outside except vacuum and none of them had a spacesuit.  Evans opened a side door and found the washroom, but there was no way out from there, either.

“We could always just bash our way through a wall,” said Evans, frustrated.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Nat.  “We don’t know what’s on the other side.  It might just be another room, or it might be something vita to life support.  Anyway, if we make a lot of noise the guards will investigate.”

“Thor can survive in space in the comics,” Johansson offered.  “And Loki fell off the Birfrost at the end of the first _Thor_ movie and was apparently okay.  Maybe one of you can go outside and let us out.”  She looked expectantly at Hemsworth and Hiddleston.

They exchanged a glance.  “You know, I don’t think that’s something I want to test,” Hemsworth said.

“It may well work,” Thor said.  “If we breathe deeply first, Asgardians can survive in space for hours.”

“Thanks,” said Hemsworth firmly, “no.”

They continued to brainstorm, but nobody’s ideas stuck.  Steve’s eyes went repeatedly to the last bunk, where the being called Fishlips was sleeping.  Her gills were opening and shutting rhythmically and she didn’t seem to be hearing their voices.  Steve stamped on the floor to see if that woke her, but she didn’t react to it – or to the sudden thump from outside a moment later.

Everybody said up and looked towards the door.

“What was that?” asked Evans.

There was another thump, a strangled cry, and the resonant sound of something hard hitting a metal surface.

Natasha got up and went back to the door to peek under it again – the others went with her, silently agreed that if anything came _through_ the door they might all be needed to fight it.  She got down on her hands and knees to look, but a moment later rolled backwards out of the way as the door opened.

On the other side, panting and holding an unconscious guard by the collar in each hand, was the banana woman.

“Hi!” she said brightly.  She dropped the guards and came in, stepping right over Natasha, and put her arms around Evans again as she closed the door with a kick.  “Where were we?”

Evans froze, and for a moment Steve honestly thought he was going to panic – and in that moment, he suddenly recognized a piece of himself in this man.  There’d been that blonde who’d come up and kissed him at headquarters one day.  Steve had just stood there like a rock because he hadn’t known how to react.  The idea of a woman forcing herself on him had been hard to comprehend.  For most of Steve’s life at that point, women had avoided him like a leper.  At least out here, they wouldn’t have to worry about Peggy walking in.

Then the man rallied.  He took a deep breath and said, “well, we’d just exchanged names.  You’re Musa, and I’m Chri… Steve.  What are you doing up here?”

“I wanted to get to know you,” she said, arms still around his midsection.  “It’s not every day you meet a man who can take on a whole Chi’Tauri hive!”

“I didn’t do it alone,” said Evans.  “Teamwork!  Teamwork is very important.  Speaking of doing things alone, though… how did you deal with those guards?”  He glanced at the door.  “Weren’t they a lot bigger than you?”

“Oh, I’m stronger than I look.”  Musa gave Evans a squeeze that made him grunt.  “They weren’t half as tough as the ones at the maintenance hatch anyway.  Wanna find out how strong I really am?”  She grinned.

Everybody else perked up at the words _maintenance hatch_ , including Evans.  “Sure,” he said, “but… maybe not _here_.  Tell you what, think you could show us this maintenance hatch so we can sneak back to our ship without the crowd getting in the way?  We can go back to my planet and have a little privacy.”

Musa giggled.  “Why, _Christine_!” she said.  “Run away with you already?  We only just met!”  She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then opened the door again.  “I’m game – follow me!” she said, and dashed back out.

Evans looked back at the others.  Johansson gestured for him to go ahead.

“You first, _Christine_ ,” she said with a snicker.

“Are you gonna tell Bob?” asked Evans.

“No.”  Johansson’s smile was unapologetic.

“Are your fingers crossed?”

“No!” she repeated, hands behind her back.

Steve interrupted.  “Are _you_ gonna tell her you’re too busy for that kind of relationship right now?” he asked.  They could hardly take this woman back to Earth with them.  Either Earth.

“Of course I am,” said Evans.  “After we escape.  Preferably when we’re very far away and I can do it by text message.”

Nat shook her head.  “Downey was right,” she told Steve.  “He’s got you _down_.”

“Christine!” Musa called from the hallway.  “Are you coming!”

“Right behind you,” Evans promised.  He stuck his tongue out at Johansson, who just giggled.

Musa was waiting in the hallway, tapping her foot impatiently.  When the group emerged, she nodded to them and then dashed up the stairs.  The whole party hurried to follow her, as Steve mentally kicked himself for not thinking of going _up_.  How had every single one of them missed that?  They were used to building on Earth, where there was usually nowhere to go from the top except down to a very hard landing.  Now they realized that the upper storeys of the ‘buildings’ joined another ring, further in towards the hub of the space station.  On the top floor were three unconscious humanoids, all of them huge, muscular individuals with their dropped weapons lying next to them.  A cord was dangling from the ceiling.

“Excuse me, pal,” said Musa, shoving one of the bodies out of the way.  She yanked the cord, and set of folding stairs, similar to the sort that might access the attic in an old house, dropped from the ceiling.  The bottom step came to rest just half an inch from one of the aliens’ faces.

“This way,” she said.

They climbed the stairs to the inner ring.  The outer ring of the space station had been hallways with tubes and hoses in the wall.  The inner one was a tiny metal walkway in the middle of a monstrous tangle of pipes and wires, some of it clearly very old and in poor repair.  Sparks dropped and steam hissed, and in places Steve could see where things had been repaired with what looked for all the world like silver duct tape.

Of course duct tape was a universal thing, he thought.  Stark wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

There were a few windows here – long, narrow, transparent panels in the ceiling that let in a bit of dim reddish light.  Other than that and the showers of sparks, there was no illumination.  When Steve paused below one window to look out, he saw that they were now on the damaged side of the planet.  The molten core could be seen, glowing white-hot, and the mantle around it a cooler yellow-orange.  It was surreal to look at, like something out of a textbook brought suddenly to life, and it made Steve doubly glad they hadn’t actually landed.  What would the gravity be like on such a world?  Was ‘down’ still towards where the middle of the planet had originally been, or was it towards the current center of mass, halfway through what remained?  Did people away from the antipodes have to walk at weird angles?

“Hey, Musa,” said Natasha conversationally.

“Yeah?” Musa asked.  “Are you two a thing?  Because I’ve done threesomes before.  The more, the merrier.”

With Evans’ back to him, Steve couldn’t tell if the other man were blushing.  He knew _he_ certainly was, and was grateful for the dim light.  Between that and the narrow walkway, which they had to navigate single-file, nobody would be able to see his face.

“That’s good to know, but we’re not a couple,” said Nat.  “Anyway, what I wanted to know was whether you can tell us where those Ravagers hang out.  We need to ask them something.”

“Bad idea,” said Musa.  “Nacre’s planning to sell you.”

“Sell us?” asked Steve.  “You mean sell our ship, right?”

“That, too,” Musa said, “but he’s definitely going to sell _you_.  Anybody who can do what you do will be worth a fortune on the gladiatorial circuit, or as indentured mercenaries.  Especially the Asgardians.  We don’t see a lot of them.”

“I wonder why,” said Thor flatly.

“You have _slaves_ out here?” Steve asked.  He would have hoped that any civilization that could build things like space stations would be beyond that.  For an insane moment he pictured himself leading a Spartacus-style revolt to free them… but that was clearly a task for another time.  If Steve got started on something like that, he would _never_ find his way back to Earth.

“We’ve got everything you can think of out here,” said Musa.  “It’s a big galaxy.”

“We definitely need to have a word with them about that, then,” Nat said.  “And a few other things, too… as part of the whole ‘escape plan’ thing we have going on.”

“Ohhh, I see,” said Musa.  Whether she did or not Steve couldn’t tell… but he’d noticed there were suddenly a lot more syllables in her vocabulary.  “They’re probably at the pubs.  Captain Nacre’s favourite is the Gigax Galactica, but they go all over.”

“I don’t think we want to meet the captain again,” said Steve.

“No, you don’t,” said Musa.  “He’s got a reputation.  Even the other Ravagers don’t trust him.”

“We don’t really want to see Miss Alpha, either,” Nat agreed.  “Or that scaly creature… I think he called it Vark.”

“Then you definitely don’t want the Gigax.  It’s too close to Aarflot’s anyway,” Musa said.  “People there will already have heard the gossip.  “We’ll try the Blue Giant.  It’s further along this way.  I know some of the staff there.”

Loki hesitated, leading Hiddleston to bump into him from behind.  “The Blue Giant?” he asked cautiously.  “What sorts of people go there?”

“All sorts,” said Musa.  “Why?”

“The name probably refers to the type of planet,” Thor reassured his brother.

“I know that,” said Loki, annoyed.  “I only wanted to be sure.”

A couple hundred more yards around the inner ring brought them to another attic door, which Musa identified as the one that led to the Blue Giant – Steve wasn’t sure how she could tell, since it looked exactly like all the others, but they had to take her word for it.  When they dropped the ladder to climb down, Steve found they were being watched.  Not by guards this time, but by half a dozen women of various sizes and colours but all in their underwear, who were passing around what looked like a vape.  They watched the intruders enter, but none commented or came closer.

There were more women wandering around on the lower levels as they made their way down.  Steve decided to believe that the upstairs of the Blue Giant was some kind of women-only hotel or shelter.  Definitely not a brothel, no matter how many of the inhabitants waved and winked at the party as they went by.

By the time they reached the third floor, they could hear thumping music.  Musa opened a door that led onto a balcony over the dance floor, and the music was suddenly loud enough to rattle Steve’s teeth as he stepped through to take in what was below them.  It didn’t look all that unlike a pub on Earth, he thought… there were people talking, drinking, dancing, and conducting shady-looking business deals, all under the light of a set of drifting holographic orbs that did indeed look much like planets such as Neptune or Uranus.  It was nice of reassuring, he thought, that human nature apparently applied to all roughly human-shaped sentient creatures.  It gave them all some common ground.  On the other hand, when he considered some of the things human nature _included_ , it was also terrifying.

“Let me see,” said Musa, scanning the crowd for familiar faces or approximations thereof.  Steve looked too, not expecting to recognize anybody – but then out of nowhere, he did.  In one corner, surrounded by women and petting some kind of animal, was a very familiar face indeed.  Steve had noticed it in the brig on the Chi’Tauri mothership, but he remembered it from before that, too.  It was the man who looked like Stan Lee.

“There.”  He pointed.  “We know that guy.”

Musa cocked her head, frowning.  “You do?  That’s funny… I’ve never seen him before.”

“Trust me, we do,” said Steve, and started down the steps to the main level.  Natasha went with him, and Steve figured she’d come to the same conclusion he had.  _This_ must be what Stan Lee on Earth had meant when he’d told them they would see him again.  He’d been surprised when they phoned him from JPL, so he hadn’t been thinking of that when he’d spoken to them in the hotel.  Instead, he had somehow known that they would end up here and run into what must be _his_ alternate self.  _How_ he’d known was not important.  Maybe it was because he was the guy writing the story.  Steve wasn’t going to think about it too hard.

The man was sitting at a corner table.  A robotic woman, like a much newer and cleaner version of Miss Alpha-Eleven-Three, was pouring him a drink.  Another being, this one resembling a cross between a woman weightlifter and a blue gorilla, was massaging his shoulders.  A third, chalk-white with glittering blue scales and spines protruding from her cheeks and forehead, was sitting next to him hanging on every word he was saying.  In his lap a furry creature that looked kind of like a very small leopard and kind of like a six-legged armadillo was curled up, enjoying being petted.

As Steve and Natasha approached, the man lowered his head so he could peer over his tinted visor at them.  “Do I owe you people money?” he guessed.

“No.  We need your help,” said Steve.

“I don’t do help,” the man replied.  He accepted a glass of something fizzy and electric pink from the robot woman.  “Thank you, darling,” he said, and offered it to the scaly one.  “If you would.”

She touched the edge, and frost appeared on it.  Her flesh was apparently icy cold.

“You helped us before, in another universe,” Steve reminded him.

The man downed his drink and then grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose as the cold gave him a headache.  “Couldn’t have been me,” he said, shaking his head.  “I don’t interfere, I just watch.  Right, ladies?”  He smiled at his companions.

“We like it when you watch,” the blue gorilla purred.

Steve was a little surprised.  For some reason he’d assumed that this man would remember meeting them before, as if Stan Lee were a creature that existed across all realities at the same time.  Evidently this was not the case, and that left Steve a little unsure how to proceed.  He glanced up at the balcony where the others were watching.  Musa was clinging to Evans from behind, and whispered something in his ear that made his eyes go huge.

No help there, then.  He next looked at Natasha, and she interpreted it as a cue to take charge.  “You owe us a favour for saving your life,” she said.

“Captain Nacre said we did you enough favours in return for that,” the man said.

Nat grabbed him by a set of bandoliers he was wearing across his shoulder.  The women and the armadillo-kitty got out of the way as she dragged him across the table.

“I’m about to save your life again,” Steve said.

“From what?” the man asked, startled.

“From her,” said Steve, nodding towards Natasha.  “Come with us.”

They escorted him back towards the stairs, holding on to his arms just tight enough to show him they meant it, but not enough to hurt him.  The others came down to meet them, and formed a ring around the captive.  If he tried to bolt, he had nowhere to go.

The three women and the cat thing, however, had followed them.

“Hey, you can’t just carry him off!” the scaly one protested.  “He’s the best tipper in the place!”  She reached out and grabbed Hiddleston’s right wrist.

Steve saw Hiddleston suck in a breath as ice crystals formed on the cuff of his sleeve.  He looked at it a moment, then shut his eyes and concentrated.  His hand turned ice-blue and the scaly woman gasped, let go, and staggered backwards, as if touching him had burned her.  For a moment Hiddleston’s eyes flashed red, then he shook his head hard and returned to normal.

The scaly woman tapped her hand against the railing, and it made a _thunk_ noise.  She was cold, but Loki’s Jotun-derived body was colder, and had frozen her stiff.

“That’s not what the club’s name means,” she said, shrinking back.  The others retreated with her.

Loki fixed Hiddleston with a glare.  “ _Never_ do that in public again,” he hissed.  "In fact, never do it at all."

“Give me my own body back and I won’t,” said Hiddleston, giving his own hand a shake.  “That was _weird_.”

“Where do we go now?” Steve asked Musa.  “Back up, or back out to the street?  Where’s the harbour entrance?” he asked.  There must be multiple entrances all around the outer ring, but he had no idea where the nearest one was, or where they were in relation to the Leviathan.

“Not far,” Musa assured him.  “We passed your ship and we’ll have to double back.  It’ll be easier to do it from the outer ring, although if Aarflot’s noticed you’re gone he’ll have people looking for you.”

“Then let’s go by the street,” said Steve.

They rounded the dance floor, giving a wide berth to a man with six arms, arranged radially around his torso, who was dancing with four women and two other men at the same time.  The entrance, with its promise of peace, quiet, and personal space beyond, was just a few feet away when another bizarre alien creature stepped into their way.  This one was seven feet tall and almost as wide, with a bronze carapace covered in stiff hairs, and several sets of mandibles that clicked ominously as it loomed over them.  The whole party stopped short, unsure of what to do, especially when this threatening beast was wearing a tropical-print shirt and a pair of sunglasses.

“Did you pay the cover charge?” it asked.

Musa ducked under Steve’s arm and popped up again in front of him.  “Nukk!”  She reached up to pat the creature on the face.  “Don’t worry, they’re with me – I snuck them away from Nacre and Aarflot!”

The beast’s posture immediately softened.  “Musa!” it said.  “All right then, sorry folks.  Have a nice evening!”  It moved aside, and they ere able to descend the steps to the street.

“Who _are_ you?” Evans asked Musa.

“Nobody in particular,” she replied cheerfully, “but Nukk and I go way back and we both have a beef with Nacre.”

“Is that why you’re helping us?” Evans wanted to know.

“Partly, but it’s mostly because you’re cute.”

Steve half-expected to be mobbed again as soon as they reached the street, but in this part of the station people seemed to be keeping their heads down, not wanting to be noticed and pretending not to notice anything themselves.  Beings hung around in corners and under eaves, and more than once a pair – or more – of glowing eyes blinked at them before vanishing into the shadows again.  The Blue Giant was in the seediest part of a very seedy town.

“Where are you taking me?” asked the man who looked like Stan Lee.

“Back to our ship,” Steve replied.  He and Natasha were in the lead now, with their prisoner between them and Musa just behind, clinging to Evan’s arm.  Hopefully having the aliens in front would help the group, now ten strong, blend into this weird place.

“To the Leviathan?” the man squeaked.  “ _Why_?  Are you gonna use me as a hostage to make Nacre leave it alone, because I can tell you now that’s not gonna work.”

“No,” said Steve.  “We want you to send a message to the Chi’Tauri telling them where we are, and saying you’ve captured us and want to sell your prisoners back to them.”

“Are you insane?” the man asked.  He stopped walking, forcing the whole party to stop with him.  “They’ll come here and blast the whole station out of the sky!”

“And you’ll have to fight them,” Steve agreed, “so while they’re distracted doing that, we can get back on board their ship.”  As Natasha had said, it was a terrible idea, but it was the best they could do with the resources they had.

“You know that won’t help you!  There’ll only be one or two queens per ship, but there are thousands more spread across the galaxy,” the man said.  “You won’t even make a _dent_ in their dominions.  Are you going to let us all die for _that_?”

For a moment he did seem to have a point… then Steve reminded himself that the people on this planet and orbiting station were hardly innocent bystanders.  “You’re a bunch of pirates and slavers,” he pointed out.

“Not _all_ of us!” said the man.  “Even if we were, who are _you_ to be judge, jury, and executioner for the lot of us?”

Good question – and one that left Steve hearing the voice of Colonel Rhodes: _that is dangerously arrogant_.  Certainly it was a situation the Accords would never have tolerated, but there were no Accords out here… not that the lack of them gave Steve the right to blow people up willy-nilly.

Musa held up a hand, as if she were a child in school.  “I would like to say that this is the first _I’ve_ heard of this plan.  Did you know about this, Christine?” she asked Evans.

“Yeah,” he said awkwardly.  “It’s sort of…”

“It’s the only idea we’ve got right now,” said Natasha.  “We need to get our friends back to their own reality, and the only way we know of to do that is to get the tesseract back.”

The man who looked like Stan Lee froze, and for a moment something odd happened to his face, as if he were about to change into something else but stopped himself just in time.  “Excuse me?” he asked.  “The _tesseract_?  The Chi’Tauri have an infinity stone?”

“Yeah,” said Steve.  “That’s kind of our fault.”  He looked at Loki, wondering if he should say that it was specifically _his_ fault.  Loki, in turn, looked at Thor, still blaming him for breaking the rune stone.

Their captive licked his lips.  “Okay, look,” he said.  “I’m not supposed to intervene, really.  I’m only supposed to observe while destiny takes its course.”

“You?”  Thor pushed between Steve and Musa to stare at the man.  “You are… of course you are!”  He laughed.  “You are one of the Watchers!”

“Yeah,” the man said, as if admitting something shameful.  “Nobody’s supposed to know, but I’ve been watching you.  Each and every one of you.”

“Then our destinies must be great indeed,” Thor said.  “The Watchers take an interest in those who have some role to play on the grandest scales of the cosmos.”

This pronouncement was terrifying on multiple levels, but the worst of all was that when Steve looked at his companions, he saw that the actors were nodding.  Evans and Hemsworth, Johansson and Hiddleston, all looked as if they thought this made perfect sense.  They knew the future, sort of, he reminded himself.  Downey had talked about spoilers.  They were about to get a big one, weren’t they?

“I’ll be your messenger, then,” said the Watcher, and cracked a bit of a smile.  “You’re forcing me to do it, after all – wouldn’t want Black Widow to break my neck!  The inevitable will happen one way or another, but maybe we can put it off a little longer.”


	21. Madness or Brilliance (Mostly Madness)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry I haven't updated in months. 2019 has been a series of personal and family crises. I swear I will try to write more regularly in the future. At least to finish this fic.

There was, of course, one person whose consent they _needed_ before they went ahead with this.  Steve turned to Musa and tried to emphasize with his expression that this was serious, though he hadn’t gotten the impression of her as someone who took things terribly seriously.  “I like to give people a choice when I can,” he said.  “Do you…”

“I’m going with you guys,” she declared.  “I get the idea that’s going to be the safest place, and if I can help save the universe while I’m at it, bonus!”

She had no idea what she was getting into, but Steve decided not to turn her down.  They were therefore officially a party of ten as they passed through the broad, weirdly barnacle-encrusted metal arch into the spaceport area.  There, they of course found another problem.  Captain Nacre had let some of his men go on shore leave, but he’d also assigned others to watch the Leviathan.  There were around a dozen of them with weapons on their backs, glaring at anyone who got too close to the two parked air scooters.  The stolen Chi’Tauri ship was their prize loot, and they weren’t going to let anyone lay a finger on it.

The group ducked behind a row of vending machines – at least one of which was bumping around as if its contents were not happy about their situation – and huddled together to plan.

“Now what?” asked Evans.

Steve peeked around the corner at the guards.  They were all large and fairly intimidating specimens of whatever they were.  If he’d had a shield to throw, he could have taken at least a few out at a distance, but they definitely weren’t a group he wanted to take on alone – or with the kind of inexperienced or underpowered help available here.

“How about lightning?” he asked, looking at Hemsworth.

“Too showy,” said Nat.

“I dunno if I want to use that on a space station anyway,” Hemsworth agreed.  “We don’t want to fry the life support or something.”

Both were good points.  Steve took another look at their opponents.  The Leviathan was in the next docking bay up… and between them and it was the Ravager ship.  Only one person appeared to be guarding _that_ vessel.  “Okay,” he said cautiously, “I think I have another idea.”

It was, admittedly, based on something he’d seen in a movie, and the movie had featured old-fashioned sailing ships instead of spacecraft, but the Ravagers would definitely not be expecting it.  He told the others what he had in mind, and this time was pleased to see Natasha smiling.

“Good idea?” he asked hopefully.

“Nope, still a Steve idea,” she said, “but it’ll do.”

While the rest of them continued to hide behind the machines, the Watcher put an arm around Musa’s waist and staggered up to the Leviathan guards as if drunk.  “Hey, boys!” he called out brightly.  “Yo ho ho and a bottle of Yook!  I got me some _booty_!”  He gave Musa a smack on the bottom.

She squeaked, then laughed.  “Oh, _you_!” she said, pinching the Watcher’s cheek.

“I thought I’d give her a tour,” the Watcher went on, grinning at the Ravagers – they glanced at each other, not quite sure how to react to this.  “She’s never been inside a Leviathan, have you, my potassium-rich darling?”

“Nope!”  Musa shook her head.

The Watcher cupped a hand around his mouth as if to say something in secret, but when he spoke it was in a stage-whisper, loud enough for everyone to hear.  “She’s never had a Leviathan inside _her_ , either, but she’s about to find out!”  He then brayed with laughter, as if this were the funniest joke in the galaxy.  Musa joined in, giggling like a madwoman.

The Ravagers were not amused.  “We picked you up in the Chi’Tauri brig, didn’t we?” asked the biggest of them.  This was a beige-skinned creature, with four arms and big curling horns like a ram.  “You’re not a member of our crew.”

“You swore me in!” the Watcher whined.

While the guards tried to figure out how to deal with this intrusion, Steve and the others ran for the platform under the Ravager ship.  The hatch in the bottom was open, with the end of the gangplank touching the dock, and a stocky grayish being, with elephant-like skin and not much by way of a neck, was sitting there flipping through a magazine with what appeared to be a furry squid on the cover.  Finding himself surrounded, this creature reached for his gun, but Evans punched him in the face and he collapsed.

There was only gravity in the parts of the docking area where people would need to walk around.  Below the walkways there was none, and a substantial quantity of junk was just floating around beneath the parked spacecraft.  They pushed the unconscious guard off the platform and left him drifting through the air while they hurried up the gangplank into the ship.

In the cockpit they found another crew member.  This one looked rather like a humanoid shrimp, but one leg from the hip and the other from the knee had been replaced with metal prosthetics.  The creature appeared to be napping when they walked in, but quickly woke up, and it, too, reached for a weapon.  Hemsworth grabbed it by the face and zapped it, and the robotic parts sparked and smoked.

They pitched the shrimp-cyborg out the door, and Steve sat down in the pilot’s chair.  It was slightly sticky.  He decided not to wonder why.

“Okay,” he said, looking at the controls and instruments.  “I… is there any _reason_ we’ve decided _I’m_ the expert on flying alien spaceships?” he asked his companions.

“You’re the one who sat down,” Nat told him.

“Loki or I could do it,” Thor said, “but I thought your plan required flying it _badly_.”

That was true – they wanted the Ravagers to think the ship would be easily re-taken.  “All right, then,” said Steve.  He inserted a hand into a floating metal circle, and tilted it back, expecting that the ship would go up

Instead, it went _down_.  The nose bounced off the dock, and two of the vending machines fell over.  The one that had been moving broke open, and a number of rust-coloured, millipede-like creatures scrambled out and fled.

It might not have been what Steve intended, but the accident did certainly get attention.  The Ravagers stopped arguing with Musa and the Watcher and ran to retrieve their ship.  One jumped onto the gangplank, which Steve didn’t know how to retract, while a couple more leaped onto the wings.  Steve quickly jerked his hand down, and the ship moved sharply _up_ to bang into some hanging girders.  The pirate who’d run up the gangplank fell and was left floating helplessly among the garbage below the docks.

Through the windshield, Steve saw the remaining Ravager guards pulling out communications devices or trying to rescue their crewmates who’d fallen into the zero-gravity area.  Musa and the Watcher, meanwhile, climbed aboard the air scooters and got them started, dipping down below the Leviathan to dock.

The controls of the Ravager ship were far more delicate than those of the Leviathan, but after a moment Steve began to get the hang of it.  He managed to guide them over to the Chi’Tauri vessel in a series of awkward lurches.  They were nearly right above it when a large, slimy-looking pirate climbed into the windshield and banged on it with one fist, before pulling out the largest energy rifle Steve had seen yet and preparing to fire it right through the glass.

Thor reached over Steve’s shoulder and pushed a button.  The window above the co-pilot’s seat blew out and the seat itself ejected, hurling the slimy creature into the air.

They were directly over the Leviathan now.  “Okay!” Steve ordered.  “Everybody out!”

He kept the ship in place as bests he could while the others climbed out the missing window and made the precarious drop onto the Leviathan’s heaving back.  Evans nearly fell, but Johansson grabbed his hands and pulled him up again.  Thor wouldn’t let Loki do it alone, and insisted Hemsworth carry him – Loki protested loudly even as Hemsworth lifted him off his feet and leaped.  Thor and Natasha went last, making the jump mere moments before another Ravager knocked down the cockpit door.

Steve saw the intruder in the reflection on the other half of the windshield, and had just enough warning to duck down into the space in front of the seat.  The pirate opened fire, and bullets – actually bullets, not energy pulses this time – shattered the remaining window glass and peppered the control panel.  Sparks went up.  The chair Steve had been sitting in was torn off its base and fell to the side, and the entire ship tilted forward as its control systems failed.

Because he was firing projectiles, the pirate had to stop and load another clip.  Steve seized the moment and stood up to give the fallen chair a kick.  It didn’t go flying like it would if he’d had his normal strength, but it did go tumbling towards the Ravager, who had to move out of the way.  Steve climbed out the window to stand on the prow of the ship, looked down, and realized that the Ravager vessel had drifted forwards and down.  The Leviathan was now _behind_ them.  He jumped over the windshield, just barely made it, and began climbing the steeply tilted hull towards the tail.

Halfway there, another pirate appeared in his way.  This one was a turtle-looking creature with spotted skin and a great deal of natural armor.  It took a swing and Steve rolled out of the way, only to roll right off the side of the ship.  He grabbed one of the aerodynamic fins to keep from falling, and found himself hanging there, his legs dangling over the junk-filled space below the docks.  When he looked to the right, the cockpit of the Ravager ship was now on fire, and the pirate with the projectile gun was bailing out.  When he looked _up_ , the turtle pulled out a very large, multi-pronged sword and prepared to bring it down on Steve’s head.

The only thing he could do was let go.

He fell only about ten feet, and then a pair of arms snatched him out of the air.  Musa plopped him behind her on the air scooter, and angled down to dock with the Leviathan.  “Gotcha!” she said brightly.

“Thanks,” Steve panted.

“No problem,” she told him.  “Christine says you’re in his body and he wants it back.”

After docking they scrambled up the tube into the Leviathan’s sinuous interior.  “I got him!  I got him!” Musa shouted, as they made their way towards the front.

Steve couldn’t see out, but he could feel the motion as whoever was at the controls made a sharp left turn.  He climbed the ladder to the cockpit – it was such a relief to be able to do that without pain! – and was just in time to get a look at the front viewscreen.  People were hurrying towards the exits or activating spacesuits that appeared to be made out of bubble wrap as they realized that the Leviathan was heading not for the airlock, but straight for the wall.  Thor pushed the controls forward to pick up speed, and they crashed right through.  Atmosphere rushed out, freezing immediately into an enormous cloud of glittering microscopic crystals.

“We made it!” exclaimed Musa, clapping her hands in delight.  “That was fun!”

The gravity had evaporated the moment they left the station, and everyone was now floating again.  Four in the cockpit had been fine, eight was too many, and ten was a crush – ten drifting in midair instead of standing on the floor was downright dangerous.  Steve caught a handle on the ceiling and cleared his throat.

“Time for phase two,” he said.  “Essential personnel only!”

“We have a phase two?” asked Johansson.

“I think he means we’re back to following the _first_ plan,” said Natasha.  “He’s not very organized.”

“Watcher, you have to stay here to deliver the message,” said Steve.  “Everybody else, either out of the cockpit or out of sight.  We don’t want to give them _any_ sort of hint that it’s a trick.  You, too, Musa,” he added.

The actors climbed down into the body of the Leviathan.  Natasha hunkered below the control panel and Steve, Loki, and Thor lurked in the access tubes so they could each give signals and cues to the Watcher.  The Watcher himself, his long mustaches floating on the air currents, activated the communications screen and let it enlarge in front of him.

For a moment there was nothing but static, but then a Chi’Tauri in a complicated helmet, marking it as of greater rank than the soldiers they’d dealt with so far, appeared.  Behind it they could see a room the size of a cathedral, with vaults and pillars and crystalline windows casting glittering lights over the walls and floor – expect that where the dimensions of a great church were based on mathematical proportions the human eye found beautiful, this looked all wrong, alien and off-balance.  Sitting in the middle of it, with a dozen tinier creatures crawling all over her and tending to her electrical burns, was the immense four-armed Queen.

Steve sucked in his breath at this reminder of the sheer _size_ of the Queen, but the Watcher remained quite calm.  If he were used to witnessing things that decided the fate of galaxies, this was probably nothing to him.

He held up a hand.  “Greetings to you!” he said to the Commander, “and good health and fertility to your magnificent Queen!”

The Chi’Tauri commander was not impressed.  “What do you want, pirate?” it rasped.

“I’ve come to bargain!” the Water said grandly, smiling as if this were a clever joke.  “I’ve got your ship and your prisoners, and if you want them back, you’ll have to make a deal.”

“We don’t care about the ship,” the Commander sneered, “and I don’t see any prisoners.”

“I’ve got them,” the Watcher assured it.  “Eight of them, in four pairs – Captain America, the Black Widow, and the two Princes of Asgard, plus their counterparts from the other world.”

“You met them in our brig,” said the Commander.  “You might have seen them there.  If they’re with you now, prove it!”  It was far more articulate than any of the others they’d heard speak, and Steve wondered if Chi’Tauri got smarter the higher their caste.

In the other tube, Thor gave Loki a poke.  “Show yourself,” he said.

“No,” Loki replied.

“You have to.  We need them to come here,” Thor reminded him.

“ _No_ ,” Loki repeated.  “I said I would not be bait, and I meant it.”

“I’ll have the smiths build you another toy ship,” Thor offered.

“I am not bait, nor am I a child any more!” Loki hissed in reply.

“Give him here,” said Hemsworth’s Australian accent.  There was some scuffling in the tube, and Hemsworth emerged, dragging Loki by the collar.  In the lack of gravity, it was no effort for him to hold Loki out at arm’s length to show the Commander.  “He’s the one you want, isn’t he?”

The Commander had been in the process of turning away, but now it stopped, cocking its head with obvious interest.  There were no eye holes Steve could see in its helmet, and yet its head moved up and down, as if looking the new arrivals over.  “You?” it asked.  “You would really sell your brother’s alternate?”

“Hiddleston?  He’s not my brother,” snorted Hemsworth.  “And _Loki_ would sell _Thor_ for one corn chip.”

“He’s not worth that!” Loki protested, wiggling in Hemsworth’s grip but unable to break it.

“Half a corn chip,” said Hemsworth.  “We’re at Haven with a whole fleet of Ravagers to protect us, so if you’re thinking about coming to claim him without paying for him, you can think again.”

“Exactly,” the Watcher agreed.  “So let’s talk about what this is going to cost you.”

Behind the Commander, the Queen was now sitting up and watching.  The Commander turned to look back at her, then bared its teeth at the Watcher.  “The Chi’Tauri do not bargain,” it snarled, and the communications screen winked out.

Hemsworth let go of Loki.  “I think we got them,” he said.  “I wonder how long it’ll take them to…”

Something on the console beeped, interrupting him.  Steve floated up to look, with the others crawling out of the tubes all around him as another screen enlarged itself.  This one showed a rear view of the space station they’d just busted out of.  Half a dozen Ravager ships had already been launched, and more were emerging.  They hadn’t escaped yet, and damaging the station had won them a lot of new enemies.

“Who here thinks they can fly this thing better than I can?” Steve asked.  He’d managed when they were pretending to drift with the rest of the launched craft at the mothership, but he didn’t trust himself to dodge bullets.

“I can,” said Loki.  He pushed Steve out of the way.

“Aren’t you supposed to be saving your strength?” asked Hemsworth.

“Do you want me to rest?  Or do you want to live?” was Loki’s reply.  “And if the opportunity arises to sell _you_ , I will remember the price of _one corn chip_ ,” he added in a snarl, as he took the controls and thrust them forward.

“ _One corn chip_ is a meme,” Hemsworth told him.  “It’s from _The Book of Troubled Birds_.”

“It is an insult nonetheless!”

The Ravagers closed in, and began to fire on them.  Loki flew the Leviathan in a wide arc, just barely ahead of the shower of projectiles.  One or two shots hit, shaking the structure of the ship but not actually penetrating it – yet.  The Avengers, with only Earth’s technology, had found ways to bring Leviathans down.  Steve didn’t doubt that the Ravagers, with their more advanced weapons, could do the same.

“Doesn’t this thing have a shield function?” asked Natasha.  “Like the guns do?”

“If you can find it, then be my guest!” Loki told her.  “Which is _not_ an invitation to press random buttons, by the way!”

“I think it ought to be here,” said Thor.  He flicked at something in one of the display screens, and it showed a bubble forming around the vessel.

Loki moved them into a low orbit around the broken planet, and its surface flew by below them, so fast Steve couldn’t watch without feeling ill.  Forests, mountains, and oceans flashed past, and then a long, snaking crack, glowing red-orange from within.  They were approaching the broken edge.  With the Ravager ships closing in, they streaked around the unnatural corner and then peeled off, making a sharp turn back into space.  Six pursuing ships shot past beneath them, but only four managed to make the turn.  The other two stopped dead, as if stuck in invisible molasses.

“Trapped in the time dilation field holding the back side of the planet up,” Loki explained with a smirk.  “It’ll take them weeks to get out.”

The other four ships were still following them, though, and more were approaching from Haven.  Loki flew a figure eight above the immense glowing mass of the planet’s exposed core, carefully avoiding the patch of stretched time.  Despite the fact that they must have been thousands of miles from it, Steve could have sworn he felt the heat of the molten rock on his face.

“The rest of them will be aware of the trick now,” Loki warned.  “Getting them stuck will be more difficult.”

“Do we _want_ them all stuck?” asked Steve.  “We’ll need them to fight the…”

An alarm went off again – but this time it was a different screen that lit up, zooming in on what was going on above what had once been the planet’s north pole.  The stars there shimmered as if in a heat haze, then faded out.  In their place appeared the shapes of the vast mother ship and its entourage of destroyers and cruisers.  They were already launching Leviathans and other forms of mobile fighter.  The Chi’Tauri, like the Ravagers, were determined not to allow a second escape.

“Turn back towards the station,” said Steve.

“The Ravagers will destroy us,” Loki warned him.

“The Chi’Tauri will follow us.  That’s the _plan_.”

“You are _terrible_ at plans!” Loki said.

“I know!”

Loki looked as if Steve’s words caused him physical pain, but he flew a loop-de-loop and headed back towards the space station.  At least ten more ships of all shapes and sizes had already been launched, and were heading straight for them.  Loki jerked the controls back and forth, dodging shot after shot as the pirates opened fire.  The invading Chi’Tauri, presumably remembering Hemsworth saying the Ravagers were on their side, returned it.

“Where’d you learn to fly a spaceship?” Hemsworth asked.

“Playing virtual combat games with Thor and his friends,” said Loki.

“By the time we were half-grown he could beat us all,” Thor said proudly, clasping Loki’s shoulder.  “Nobody _ever_ beat Hogun at dogfights, except Loki!”

“It was the only way to keep you from calling me names when you won,” Loki snarled.

“That was all in good fun, to encourage you to improve,” Thor assured him.

“It didn’t _feel_ that way.”

The space station called Haven was looming larger and larger in the display, and Steve reached out to touch Loki’s arm.  “Don’t run into it,” he said.

“I know what I’m doing,” Loki replied, and kept going.  Steve couldn’t actually brace against anything in zero gravity, but he felt his muscles tense up as they got closer and closer, and then just as it seemed like they _had_ to crash into the structure, they missed it by mere yards and dived through the rotating spokes that connected the rings to the central hub.  The station hadn’t seemed to be spinning that fast when they were on board it, but from an outside perspective it was like a turbine.  A small Chi’Tauri vessel that tried to follow them hit a spoke, and the explosion lit up the rear view screen.  The station itself was knocked off balance and began to tumble wildly.  Small ships flew off in every direction, like spray from a shaking dog, as the people inside scurried to defend or evacuate.

_Who are you to be judge, jury, and executioner for all of us?_ the Watcher had asked.  Colonel Rhodes had said something similar at the meeting about the Accords, hadn’t he?  And followed it with _that is dangerously arrogant, Steve_.

They were saving the universe, he reminded himself.  The Watcher had also said that getting the tesseract back was the most important thing – more important even than Steve and the others getting back to their own bodies and home.  Even so, all those pirates and prostitutes and shady hoteliers, no matter how tough or ugly or partially robotic they might be, were still people…

Despite the fact that they were in a vacuum that shouldn’t have been able to carry vibrations, the structure of the Leviathan began to rattle.  A huge ball of blue light was forming in front of the Chi’Tauri mothership.  It grew to be what Steve estimated was nearly half a mile across, and then the vibration ceased as it shot away from the ship to engulf the space station.  Haven exploded on impact.  Pieces went flying in all directions, tumbling chaotically.  The Ravager ships and lifeboats swerved, trying to avoid them.  Loki made a sudden turn to avoid a section of what Steve could have sworn was the spiral staircase from Aarflot’s place.

There were literally hundreds of ships in space now.  Everything that could be launched from the station had been, and more were swarming up from the planet.  There was no going back now.

Steve swallowed and tried to stay in control of both the situation and himself.  “We need to blend in with the Chi’Tauri attack force while we try to get close to the mother ship,” he said.

He wasn’t sure how they were going to do that when the Leviathans were _ahead_ of the mother ship, but Loki seemed to have it under control.  He singled out a vessel from the station – a clunky-looking ship that appeared to serve some industrial purpose, rather than being designed for battle – and headed towards it.

The industrial ship didn’t seem to notice at first.  It zipped in between two other Leviathans, and a pair of robotic arms tossed out two bundles of brushed silver objects, about six inches across and held together six or eight in a netted bag, as if they were tomatoes at a grocery store.  These hit the Leviathans and stuck there.

Loki kept chasing the vessel, and passed between the other two Leviathans.  About thirty seconds after first sticking, the bags of explosives went off.  The Leviathans were broken in half, strewing wreckage and Chi’Tauri bodies.

“Wish we’d had some of _those_ in New York,” murmured Natasha.

Whoever was on board the industrial vessel had finally noticed they were being chased, and tried to evade.  Loki responded by circling around it, staying out of range of the arms while herding the slower ship back towards the Chi’Tauri.  They wouldn’t be able to dock with the mothership this time, Steve realized – there was no way they’d be able to get out again if they did.  They had to go directly to where the tesseract was, but where _was_ that?

“Hiddleston,” Steve said.  “The Queen told Thanos she would keep the tesseract safe personally?”

“Yeah, it’s in her chambers,” said Hiddleston.  “She’s got guards.”

The Queen’s chamber as they’d seen it on the communications screen had looked easily big enough to admit a Leviathan or two.  Where on the ship would it be?

“You.”  Musa poked the Watcher.  “You know everything.  Where is it?”

“I’m not supposed to intervene,” he said.  “I did my bit by sending your message.  I can say I did that because you threatened me.  I can’t do…” he yelped as Musa grabbed him by the shoulder and punched him in the gut with her other hand.  She wound up to do it again, and his eyes went wide.  “Back of the ship!  Between the engines!  Most shielded area!”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” said Steve.


	22. The Queen's Chamber

Weaving back and forth, Loki used the Leviathan’s long body to herd the industrial vessel towards the back of the mothership – and as they approached, Steve was once again staggered by the sheer _size_ of the spacecraft.  It was far larger than the station it had destroyed, bigger than a helicarrier or the largest cruise ship.  It must have been literally miles long.  They were moving very quickly, but it still took several minutes to chase the industrial ship all the way down its immense length.

“That’s an ore-processing ship, if you wanted to know,” said Musa, as if they were having coffee rather than fighting for their lives.  “They use those charges to break up asteroids and access their cores.”

Whoever was flying the ship in question seemed to have decided that if they were going down, they were going down _fighting_.  The robotic arms lobbed packages of charges off to both sides as it sailed down the length of the mothership.  Some hit and stuck, and in the screen showing a rear view Steve could see them blow up a few moments later.  The holes they made were minuscule at the scale of the giant craft, but they were probably big enough up close.  Other bombs flew off into space and detonated harmlessly.

Several of the bomb packets were obviously thrown right at _them_.  Loki dodged three or four, but then a warning started to blare.  A screen popped up, showing one stuck to the hull right outside one of the air scooter docks.  Steve’s heart rate shot up.  What could they do?  They _needed_ this particular Leviathan, the one with the wormhole generator, but even if they could abandon it, they had no way to do so.  The scooters only worked within an atmosphere.

“Hemsworth!” said Thor.  “You must remove it.  You can survive the vacuum.”

“What?” asked Hemsworth, pale-faced.

“Go!”  Thor turned him around and pushed him down the tube.

Steve reached out and enlarged the alarm screen.  There were small lights on each of the bombs – eight of them, packed together in a bag of metal mesh – flashing faster and faster as they counted down to explosion.  For far too long, nothing happened.  Then another alarm significed that the door to the empty dock had been forced open, and an arm reached out and began feeling around.

“Further up!  Further up!” Steve urged.  Could Hemsworth hear him?  Of course he couldn’t.  Once he was out the door at the bottom of the docking tube there was no air to carry the sound.

The searching fingers missed the charges again… and _again_ … and then finally caught on the bag.  He dragged it inside, out of sight, and Steve’s breath caught.  What if it went off while _inside_ the Leviathan?  A moment later, however, a package went flying away from them, wrapped up in Thor’s red cape.  It sailed away to land on one of the mothership’s huge banks of engines, and there it blew up.  Half the engine went with it, in an immense blue fireball.  Shrapnel – and Chi’Tauri bodies – sprayed into space.

The alarm shut off as the docking door closed again, and everybody exhaled.  Thor and Johansson climbed down to make sure Hemsworth was okay, while the rest of them stayed in the cockpit, trying to be ready for whatever would happen next.  The end of the mothership was in sight ahead.

Then suddenly they were past it, and Loki had to turn the Leviathan around to look back at where they’d just been.  The rear of the ship came into view, one huge bank of engines on either side of a row of glittering windows, set behind several layers of pink force field shielding.  The engines on the starboard side had been shut down to prevent further damage, and doing so must have affected the port ones as well, because they were flickering.

Under normal circumstances, nobody would dare attack the ship from behind because the engines would blow them away if turned on.  Right now, that was not a possibility, and even with the shielding that huge expanse of glass looked very vulnerable.

“Through the windows?” Loki asked.

“Yep,” said Steve.  “Right on through.”

Thor and Johansson returned with Hemsworth.  He was breathing heavily, and rubbing his bare arms to warm them after the chill of space.  There was frost in the whiskers around his mouth, but other than that, he seemed to be all right.  Steve hoped he wouldn’t be too traumatized by the experience.

“Everybody hang on,” said Loki.  “This ought to be interesting.”  He forced the controls forward.

It wouldn’t have been accurate to say they _dived_ , because in space there was no up or down, but they angled towards the huge mothership and picked up speed in such a hurry it _felt_ that way.  The passengers grabbed handles, edges, and bulkheads to brace themselves.

The whole Leviathan shook as they impacted the first of the force field layers.  Everybody tried to hang on tighter.  Loki forced them forward again, and they hit the second, then the third.  The craft’s exoskeleton groaned under the competing forces, and Steve worried that it would be torn apart before they got in.  The fourth layer slowed them still further, then the fifth.

Thor touched the weapons screen.  Bolts of plasma smashed through the windows ahead of them, and the Leviathan itself followed while the glass, or whatever it was, was still molten around the edges.  Sparks flew up as they hit a tiled floor and the vessel skidded on its belly, slithering back and forth and crashing into furniture and the Queen’s fleeing attendants.  Steve remembered the Leviathan had had hit the ground in New York under the Hulk’s fist and how it had crumpled, but this one held.  They’d clearly done a lot of damage, but they still hadn’t broken the antigravity field.

Then suddenly, it was over.  A moment ago everyone had been drifting in zero gravity.  Now they were lying on the floor panting for breath, and the Leviathan was no longer moving.  Outside they could hear things cracking and sparking and tinkling, as well as the sound of approaching footsteps, but the main impression was one of immense, yawning silence.

One by one, they picked themselves back up.  With Steve and Evans in the lead, they climbed down out of the cockpit and lowered themselves through the docking tubes for some cautious reconnaissance.

The Queen’s chambers had looked big on the view screen.  From inside, they were impossibly immense, easily twice the size of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, which was the biggest interior space Steve could think of off the top of his head.  And like Saint Peter’s, every inch of every available surface was decorated, in twisted metal and oddly slimy-looking cut glass, arranged in organic shapes that seemed to be moving.  As soon as Steve looked directly at them, they were still, but he felt like they started again as soon as he looked away.  Curtains of sheer metallic fabric were draped from the roof and walls.  A mezzanine around the main room had a railing of snaking metal hoops in skeletal forms, and the walls below were covered with a mosaic in black, gold, and silver that looked like something out of Gaudi’s nightmares.

It was all insanely opulent at the same time as it was absolutely hideous, alien and menacing and sharp.  Every instinct screamed at Steve to get out of this place as soon as possible, as if the room itself were the gullet of a monster ready to snap its jaws shut on him.

All that, however, was mere background.  Between Steve and the scenery were four rows of Chi’Tauri troops, bigger and better-armed than any they’d seen yet except the Queens.  Each was holding a double-ended weapon with the puzzle of a plasma rifle on one end and a long blade with a recurving fishhook tip on the other.

Behind them was the enormous Queen.  She was dressed in different armor now.  The previous set had been mainly decorative, but this new one was made of thick plates and rivets, making her look like a boiler on an old steam engine – huge, full of barely-contained power, and all but impenetrable.  Even her face and hands were covered, by a helmet and gauntlets.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Steve heard Evans whisper.

Steve put a hand on his double’s shoulder.  “Just remember,” he whispered.  “You create a chink, and then get out of the way and let Hemsworth electrocute her.”  It had worked before.  It would work again.

“Right.”  Evans licked his lips.

Steve wanted to tell him it would be easy.  He wanted to tell him he knew he could do it… but did he?  This guy was just an actor.  He had a stunt man.  When he threw a punch, it missed on purpose and let the camera angles do the rest.  When he threw the shield, he mimed it and the special effects people animated it in post-production.  So far he’d mostly just pummeled things and hoped for the best.  Could he _really_ do this?

Steve’s moment of hesitation must have lasted too long, though because before he could actually _say_ anything, Hemsworth dropped out of the tube next door and leaped into the lines of Chi’Tauri like an avenging angel, electricity arcing from his fingertips.  The aliens fired on him, but their plasma bolts shattered when they touched his lightning.  He, at least, did not need a pep talk.

“I don’t see the tesseract,” said Johansson.

“We’ll find it,” Steve promised her.  “Just as long as they’re kept busy.”

Johansson nodded and stood up straighter, and Steve realized she’d misinterpreted what he’d said.  He would have corrected her, but Nat got there first.

“Not you,” Nat said firmly.  “You’re not as tough as them and you don’t have the training.  You can’t…”

“I do as many of my own stunts as I can,” Johansson informed her, “and I’ve learned the fight moves.  It’s like I’ve been rehearsing for this for years.  I probably can’t _fight_ them,” she admitted, “but I can keep out of the way and help distract them.”

“Let _me_ at them!” said Musa, and scrambled out of the tube behind Hemsworth.

Evans watched the women go, then clenched his jaw for a moment before deliberately relaxing it.  “Well, if I don’t go, Scarlett will never let me hear the end of it,” he said.

“Do your best,” said Steve.  “That’s all I can ask of anybody.”

“I know,” Evans nodded.  “It’s all I ask of myself.”  He tensed and relaxed again, then went to the nearest of the downed Chi’Tauri, still twitching on the floor from Hemsworth’s lightning, and scooped up its dropped weapon to join the fray.  Musa had found one of these, too, and she whacked a soldier’s helmet off with the muzzle end of it before turning the weapon around to bury the fishhook in the alien’s eye.

Steve, Nat, and Thor hung back, crouched behind the Leviathan’s fins, and waited.  The Queen had not yet joined the fight, although she was watching closely.  They wanted the others to get to her, so they could be sure she’d be killed or at least occupied, before they went for the tesseract.  Loki was sitting at the top of the tube, conserving energy again, but Hiddleston slid down to join the others at the bottom.

“I guess I should…” he began.

Loki grabbed him by the hair.  “Oh, no, you don’t.”

“I can help!” Hiddleston protested.  “I can do the ice thing.”

“You can, but you _won’t_ ,” said Loki firmly.  “I’m not having word of that get around, and I’m not letting you get hurt, either.  _They_ might be willing to risk their bodies in somebody else’s keeping, but I’m not.  You stay right here and don’t move a toe without my permission.”

Hiddleston climbed back up and sat down facing Loki, annoyed.  “You’re a lot of fun to play,” he observed, “but a pain in the arse to deal with.”

“Good,” said Loki.

Hemsworth had now broken through the first line of guards and was on to the second.  He picked up a fallen individual by one leg, and swung its body as if it were a mace.  He looked suspiciously as if he were having fun, Steve thought.  Maybe like Evans, he thought he was dreaming.

When the other guards fired on him, Hemsworth held the injured one in front of himself to absorb the blows – and it was _that_ which finally made the Queen move.  She got up and bellowed in anger, then scrambled forward on four of her six limbs.  Her armor made scraping sounds on the floor as if a whole army of cockroaches were skittering across it.  Two arms reached down to rip the unconscious guard out of Hemsworth’s hands, then raised it high in the air before bringing it down on top of him, hard.  The huge room echoed with the impact as the armor connected with the floor tiles, and Steve winced in sympathy.

“Pah,” Thor said, dismissive.  “He’s fine.”

Now that the Queen had joined the battle, it was time to go.  They climbed back up into the belly of the Leviathan and then slid down the tube on the other side to the scooters docked there.  Steve disengaged one of these so it fell out on the floor, and the group climbed out – only to find themselves surrounded on _this_ side, too, by another arc of guardsmen who hadn’t yet started fighting.  They’d been waiting for a tactic exactly like this.

There was no time to think, so Steve, as usual, did the very first thing that popped into his head.  He grabbed the controls of the scooter.  Nat jumped on behind him and put her arms around his middle, and he plowed the vehicle right into the rows of Chi’Tauri like a bowling ball.

Some of the guardsmen in the second row had time to get out of the way.  The ones in the first row could only dive out of the way or be knocked off their feet.  A few in the third row actually managed to start firing, but they mostly hit their fleeing comrades.  Steve burst through the line and found himself heading for the ornate metal doors of the Queen’s chamber, which were in the process of folding shut.  Instinct told him that if he put on speed, he might be able to make it, but logic intervened – he wasn’t _trying_ to escape from the room, and if he succeeded in getting out he might not be able to get back in again.

So he turned the vehicle sharply, forcing Natasha to tighten her grip so as not to be thrown off.  Thor, Loki, and Hiddleston were following on the other scooter, and they skimmed the heads of the guardsmen who were still fighting with Evans, Hemsworth, and Musa.  It was Hiddleston who spotted what they were looking for.

“There!  It’s up there!” he shouted, pointing.

On either side of the monstrous main chamber were a series of smaller rooms, both on the ground floor and on the mezzanine, where they opened onto a broad balcony with the unsettlingly skeletal railing.  In one of the upper ones, behind a set of ornate metal gates, was a blue glow.  The tesseract was in there.

Steve turned again, and yanked up on the controls to gain altitude.  He was pleased to think he was getting pretty good at this – but then a bolt of energy from one of the guardsmen’s weapons grazed the back of the scooter, taking off the last eight inches of the platform he and Nat were stood on.  Sparks and smoke flew, and they immediately began to lose both velocity and altitude.  Steve pushed the controls further, but couldn’t compensate.  They were heading directly for the wall, right below the balcony.

At the last moment, Steve and Natasha both leaped off the scooter and grabbed the metal railing.  The vehicle, no longer under control, veered to the side and skidded away across the ground, smoke rising from its damaged rear end.  Steve dragged himself up with both arms to climb over the railing, but a shot from a plasma rifle blasted through it right next to him.  The force of the impact nearly shook him off, but he managed to hold and reached again for a higher part of the railing – only to have to immediately let go when the metal, too close to where the plasma had hit, turned out to be too hot to hang onto.

The other vehicle sailed over their heads and landed in the room beyond.  Thor and Hiddleston jumped off and ran to help Steve and Natasha climb up, while Loki darted into the room to grab the tesseract.

“Don’t touch it!” Thor reminded him.  Loki was still in Hiddleston’s human body, which wouldn’t be able to bear contact with an infinity stone.

There were several ways Loki might have answered that, none of which would have surprised Steve.  He could have shouted back that he wasn’t a fool, or that he was prepared and had a solution, or he just might not bother to respond at all.  Instead of any of those, however, Steve heard a cry of surprise and terror, followed by a horrifying, inhuman screech.

Hiddleston yanked Steve up onto the balcony and then ran to see what had happened to Loki.  Steve picked himself up to follow, with Thor and Natasha close behind him.  They found Loki had opened the gates into the room – and then immediately climbed halfway up them, where he was now clinging to the metalwork while three unidentifiable creatures tried to get him down.

All three were the same kind of thing, whatever they were.  They were about fifteen feet long, including short, thick tails with two barbs in the end.  They had beady, metallic-looking eyes and grayish, translucent skin like the Chi’Tauri, with long glassy teeth and manes of porcupine-like quills around their necks.  Bodily proportions suggested they were normally quadrupeds, but all three were standing on their hind legs clawing and snapping at Loki, clinging just above their reach.  For the first moments Steve wondered if these were some caste of Chi’Tauri he’d never seen before, but then he noticed that all three had complicated leather and metal harnesses around their shoulders and midsections, and were chained to something further back in the room.  These were not soldiers.  These were guard dogs.

Steve had once read an article about a drug gang using a captive lion to guard their supply.  This might be something similar and was probably just as abusive, but animal cruelty could not be the issue here.  The dogs – for lack of a better word for them – had just realized that while Loki might be out of reach, there was other prey at easy hand.

One of them continued trying to get to Loki, but the other two dropped to all fours and stalked towards the newcomers.  Steve took an involuntary step backwards, but then the monsters stopped.  They had reached the ends of their chains, and could only scrape their claws on the tiles, growling and hissing.  That was a relief, but it didn’t last long.  The dogs were still in the direction they needed to go.

Hiddleston gritted his teeth and held out a hand.

“Don’t you dare!” said Loki.

“I don’t hear you making other suggestions!” Hiddleston replied, annoyed.  He glanced over his shoulder, but the battle in the main chamber, if that were what he was looking for, was not visible from this vantage point.  There was only the sound of rifle fire, and the occasional bright bloom of the lightning.  Hiddleston turned back towards the dogs and thought for a moment, then took his coat off and wrapped it around one arm before running straight at them.

Of course, Steve thought.  Hiddleston had just remembered that he was in Loki’s body, and that like Hemsworth in Thor’s, he was more or less indestructible.  Sure enough, the dog lunged to chomp down on him, and Hiddleston stuck the arm with the coat around it into its mouth while bringing his other fist down between its eyes.  The blow knocked the animal to the floor, and when it got up again, it was staggering and shaking its head.

“Don’t!” Loki insisted.  “Leave it to the others!  Don’t you _dare_ get hurt!”

“Shut _up_!” Hiddleston ordered him, and grabbed a second animal by the quills.  The first one tried to pounce on him again, but stumbled and moved to the side again.  Hiddleston put a hand on its nose to hold it at arm’s length, like a bully holding off a smaller child on the playground.

“Get the tesseract!  Get the tesseract!” he shouted.

Steve felt a moment’s doubt.  So far Loki seemed to be stuck in this with the rest of them and willing to do his part to get out of it.  He’d saved Steve’s life more than once and had been instrumental in getting them this far… but he was still the same man who’d tried to conquer the Earth with a Chi’Tauri army of his own.  What would happen when he had both the tesseract and his body back?  It seemed worryingly likely that he’d just abandon them.

Nat and Thor, however, charged into the room without hesitation, and Steve had to go with them.  The dogs tried to follow, but Hiddleston grabbed the chains on their harnesses and dragged them back.  Even with his Jotun’s strength this was clearly a great effort, but he braced himself against the metal gate – the doors of a cage, Steve realized – and held them.

The rooms here might have been smaller than the vast main chamber, but they were still very much on the scale of the towering Chi’Tauri queen.  It was easily a hundred feet down to the other end of the room where the tesseract was, suspended inside a transparent tube three feet across and twelve feet tall.  The tube itself stood on top of a four-foot metal base, to which the three dogs were chained, and above it another metal housing divided into seven broad ribs, each decorated with designs that made Steve think of vertebrae and nerves, that arched up to join the ceiling.  All of this was held together by bolts that, while they were designed to be part of the decorative texture, were still two inches thick.  They were going to need somebody with superhuman strength to get that open.

“Hiddleston!” Steve called, turning around.

When he did, he saw several things at once.  The first was Hiddleston still braced against the cage door, which was groaning and bending under the strain as the dogs tried to break free.  If he lost hold on them, or if the gate broke, they would come tearing down the room to attack.  Loki had either fallen or climbed down and was now behind Hiddleston, holding on to his clothing in an effort to help keep the animals in check.  It probably wasn’t doing much.

Beyond them, silhouetted against the lights in the main chamber, was the Queen.  She was standing on the balcony now, ignoring Hemsworth, who was clinging to her back.  She had one forelimb on the ground pinning something down, and with another was raising one of the fishhook blades like a dagger to spear her prisoner.

“Johansson!” cried Natasha.  She took off for the door at a run, but before she’d gone more than a couple of steps, a metal door suddenly slammed shut across the entrance to the room, and the lights went out.

The illumination in the Chi’Tauri ship had already been dim and sickly – scientists on Earth who’d studied their bodies and technologies had suggested that they originated on a world a long way from its star, or that they might be naturally nocturnal and didn’t like bright light.  Now the room was plunged into blackness, lit only by the unnatural electric blue glow of the tesseract.  For a few seconds Steve couldn’t see anything while he waited for his eyes to adjust.

The first thing he made out when they did was that the gate was about to collapse.  The jolt from the door coming down had been just a little more than it could bear.  The upper hinge screeched as it bent, then broke with a _spang!_ and the whole gate toppled over, knocking Loki and Hiddleston to the floor.  Hiddleston let go of the chains, and the three dogs came barrelling at Steve, Natasha, and Thor.

There was nothing they could do to stop them.  There was no furniture in the room, only the tesseract pillar and, strewn on the floor, a few bits of weird, slightly translucent bone that must have been from the animals’ meals.  They couldn’t call for help and even if they could, it looked very much as if one of their counterparts had just been wither killed or terribly wounded.

Steve realized they hadn’t seen the Watcher since Musa had beaten the location of the Queen’s chamber out of him.  Did he have the power to appear and disappear at will?

“Lift me up!” Natasha ordered.

Steve didn’t question it.  He hoisted her onto his shoulders, and she stood on them to grab the decorative ring above the glass part of the tesseract pillar.  Her hands just barely reached it, but she managed to scramble up to sit astride one of the seven arched ribs.  She reached down for Steve and helped him climb up after her, and Thor took a running jump and leaped up to grab another piece of decorative metal.  Once off the ground they each chose a rib and shimmied up.  Judging by the failure of their attempt to get Loki down from the gate, the dogs couldn’t climb or jump very well… but maybe they just hadn’t been particularly motivated.

Loki and Hiddleston were nowhere to be seen, lost somewhere in the darkness at the far end of the room.

The first dog launched itself at the pillar and tried to dig its claws in as if climbing a tree.  It dug deep gouges into the glass as it slid back down.  The other two ran up, and three sets of slavering alien jaws snapped at them from below.

“All right, now what?” asked Steve.  His brain churned.  There had to be _something_ they could do.

“Loki!” Thor called out.  “Brother!  Can you hear me?”

There was no reply – or maybe it was too hard to be heard over the snarling and shrieking of the dogs.  One of them got up on its hind legs and jumped, hitting the pillar again right where the claw gouges were.  The glass went _ping_ as it began to crack.

The pillar had obviously been far too strong for a human to break.  They would have needed an Asgardian or a super-soldier or a Hulk… or maybe just an explosive arrow, or a man in a suit of nuclear-powered armor.  The Chi’Tauri animals appeared to have strength enough.  A second blow snapped a bolt, and the whole structure tried to shift to one side.  The metal groaned.

They should have brought Evans, Steve thought.  He could have helped with this while Hemsworth fought the Queen.  Or perhaps Musa.  She was, as she’d observed, stronger than she looked.  Maybe _she_ could have taken these creatures.  Damn the Watcher for vanishing on them!

The animal slammed against the pillar again.  Cracks in the glass spread, and the whole thing bent as the broken side lost its integrity.  Steve, Thor, and Natasha climbed a little further up the ribs, hoping these would not be torn from the ceiling when the pillar broke underneath them.

“Anybody got any ideas?” Steve asked.  Despite his best efforts, _he_ had none.

“I’m working on it!” said Natasha, but she sounded worried, too.  Steve hoped things were going better for the others outside, but that didn’t seem very likely.


	23. The Nest

The Chi’Tauri dog hit the pillar again, and the rib Thor was clinging to tore free of the ceiling.  Its upper end swung down, and Steve had to reach out and grab the back of Thor’s shirt to keep him from falling.  Chris Evans’ body was muscular, but holding the weight of a large man while also keeping _himself_ from falling was a strain.  His shoulders quickly began to feel like they were on fire.

A moment later, the rib Natasha was holding broke at the pillar end.  It bent where it attached to the ceiling, and she was left dangling just inches above the jaws of the dogs.  There was a groaning sound above them, as if the entire ceiling were about to give way.

From somewhere at the far rend of the room, or perhaps in the chamber beyond, was a loud crash.  Steve had no idea what was going on outside, but he could taste stinging bile in the back of his throat, and in that moment he realized – he was going to die here.  Would anybody on Earth miss him?  Would Stark wonder what had become of him, or just be glad he was gone?  Would Sharon grieve for him as Peggy had done?  What would Princess Shuri say to Bucky when he came out of cryo?  She wouldn’t have any idea what had happened…

One more blow was too much for the pillar to take.  The glass cylinder came free of its metal housing, fell to the floor, and smashed.  The tesseract bounced out and rolled away, and one of the dogs took off after it like a cat chasing a toy ball.  The other two remained where they were, waiting for their prey to fall into their mouths.  Steve and Thor were now both dangling from a single attachment point forty feet above the floor, but for whatever reason it was _Nat’s_ rib that broke first.  She dropped towards the snarling alien creatures.

The only thing Steve could think of to do was to let go also, and hope she could get away while they were focused on him.  That would only delay them for a moment, he would have to drop Thor to do it, and it wouldn’t do any of them any good in the long run… and yet…

From the other end of the room there was a flash of brilliant light.

Steve looked up at it, trying to figure out what it was, and so did the dogs.  By the time they’d turned, however, it had faded, leaving everybody in the dark again as the afterimage danced on their retinas.  That cleared a moment later, and Steve saw that there was now a globe of dimmer light there.  In the middle of it was Hiddleston, now on his feet and dressed in Loki’s Asgardian garb of black and green leather with golden helmet and greaves.  He strode towards them, his hands held out on each side, the light around him growing brighter.  Had he figured out how to use Loki’s magic?

Then the world flickered before Steve’s eyes, and he found himself lying on his back with the Chi’Tauri queen towering over him.

The next split second was spent trying to take in an awful lot of information.  Steve was flat on his back on the floor and he was aware of a variety of scrapes and bruises all over his body, but at the same time he felt more awake and alert than he had in days.  Natasha was astride him, using one of the fishhook weapons to block the one the Queen was trying to rip Steve open with.  Thor was clinging to the armor on the Queen’s shoulder.

They were back in their own bodies.  Loki must have found the strength to switch back with Hiddleston and had then done the rest of them, as he’d promised.  And despite the fact that his _own_ situation was absolutely desperate, Steve’s first thought was for the four actors.  They were now trapped in that room with the tesseract and its ferocious guardians, with no idea what they were doing.

Steve had only moments to think about that, though.  The Queen lifted her weapon to try skewering him, and Natasha, thinking fast, caught the hook on it with her own.  She was lifted off her feet into the air.  Nat had been worried about Johansson being the one who got stabbed because of a lack of training, but it looked from here as if she’d actually saved Evans’ life.  Hopefully he would live long enough to return the favour.  Back in the moment now, Steve sprang to his feet to fight.

Two Chi’Tauri came at him.  Steve looked around, spied a decorative boss on the wall next to the closed doors of the tesseract chamber, and ripped it down to use as a shield.  Weapons fire from the soldiers singed it but did not go through, so they ran to attack him at closer range.  He caught the end of a fishhook on the edge of the shield and threw its holder over the railing to the floor, then he slid through the legs of the second attacker and drove the shield’s rim into the base of its spine, damaging some of the cybernetics.  The alien screamed and crumpled.

No wonder Hemsworth had looked like he was having a good time – Steve had completely forgotten how much _fun_ it was to have superpowers.  When he’d first gotten the serum, when he’d been using it for nothing more than to lift motorcycles and do tricks for adoring crowds, there’d been a couple of weeks before the novelty wore off when he’d absolutely loved it.  Steve Rogers had lived most of his life unable to do nearly anything and now it suddenly seemed there was nothing he _couldn’t_ do.  Despite the circumstances, he felt the same thing now.  It was good to be back.

With the soldiers taken care of, he turned around and found that the Queen had hopped back down into the central chamber, with Thor and Natasha still clinging to her.  They would be trying to find, or to make, that chink they needed in her armor.  Steve ought to join them, but the doors of the tesseract room were right behind him.  He lifted a leg and kicked them as hard as he could.

They didn’t budge.

Steve tried banging on it with a fist.  “Hello!” he called out.  “Guys?  Loki?  Can you hear me?”  His stomach turned inside-out.  Loki had his magic, but would he be exhausted again after using it?  Would he _care_ enough to save the humans, or would he take the tesseract and run?

There was no reply.  There had to be _some_ way to open the door.  Steve had managed to keep Evans’ body alive while he was in it, and he couldn’t stop just because he was out of it again.  He had to get these people home.  Johansson had a husband and daughter she would want to see again.  Evans had parents, and Hemsworth a wife and children.  Hiddleston must have family, too, though Steve hadn’t had a chance to meet them, and all four had friends and neighbours and _lives_.  Hayley Atwell and Bob Downey and Donny Glover would all want to see their friends again.  Leaving them to die was simply not an option.  Steve raised his makeshift shield to hammer on the door again.

Then he heard the scream.

It didn’t come from inside the room, it was from below the balcony.  For a moment Steve was worried it was Natasha, but when he looked he realized it was somebody else he’d completely forgotten about.  Musa had joined in the fight, too, but she was now on the floor in a pool of yellow goo, with one leg badly broken.  The Queen was looming over her, ignoring Thor and Natasha hammering on her armor, ready to strike again and rid herself of at least _one_ of these annoying smaller creatures.

Steve vaulted over the railing and landed next to her, but he was already having doubts.  There was so much fluid – it resembled the banana-flavoured antibiotics the SHIELD people had made him take once, after he was accidentally exposed to a bioweapon – all over the floor.  If that were Musa’s equivalent of blood, it didn’t seem like she could possibly survive.  Even so, she was dragging herself away with her arms, while the Queen prepared to slice at her again with a much larger bladed weapon now.  This one must have been designed for the Queen herself to wield, because it was longer than Steve was tall.

He slid between them and brought up his improvised shield.  It didn’t shed impacts the way the familiar vibranium one would have.  It was the wrong shape and made of the wrong material, so he got a painful jolt to the shoulder, but was able to deflect the blow to the side.  Steve looked down at Musa, and she rolled over to get better leverage as she crawled away, leaving a trail of slime.  After a few yards, the remains of her broken leg came away entirely, and were left twitching in the yellow blood behind her.

The Queen raised her weapon again.  It had intricate inlays of jewels on the handle and blade, but the serrated edge was designed to tear flesh at the same time as cutting it, and it could certainly kill.  Steve wound up and threw his shield at the Queen’s face.  It bounced off her helmet and embedded itself in the ceiling, while he ran for the other side of the room.  If he could just make the Queen chase _him_ instead of Musa, who was trying to hide in the crashed Leviathan.

In the middle of the room, so far ignored, was what must have been the Queen’s bedding – an enormous heap of cushions in various shapes and sizes, but all of them at least the size of human beings.  When Steve got up close, he found that these were made of the same metallic cloth the Queen had used to decorate her armor, and there were _bones_ among them.  He moved one cushion aside to make a hiding place and found a battered skull that looked like it belonged to something similar to the dogs.  Before he’d had time to properly deal with _that_ , however, the skull fell over, and underneath it was a larva.

It was about five feet long and two feet across, its skin translucent white with throbbing veins visible beneath, six stumpy legs and six bulbous eyes above a lipless, dribbling mouth.  For a moment all Steve could do was stare at it in shock.  It had never occurred to him that having a _Queen_ meant the Chi’Tauri might go through a larval stage.  This could hardly be anything else, though, and the fact that it was sleeping in the Queen’s nest suggested it might be a juvenile version not of a soldier, but of _her_ , a thing that would grow up to command a ship of its own.

Behind him, Steve heard the Queen shriek.  She left the others and began scrambling across the floor towards him.

The pile of cushions heaved and a second larva popped up, then a third.  Despite their blobby appearance they were heavy and deceptively strong, and they quickly piled on top of Steve.  They were heavy, too, weighing his chest down and pushing him into the pillows, where it became difficult to breathe.  Saliva dripped onto his face and chest as their little mouths opened and shut, exposing tongues covered with tiny, glassy spines.  They were, he realized, planning to eat him alive.

One licked at his arm, and he felt intense pain as it scraped away a layer of skin.  Another ripped at his shirt, tearing it off to get at the flesh underneath.  As a fourth and then a fifth larva joined them, he got a fleeting glimpse through the mass of blubbery bodies and saw the adult Queen looming over him.  She raised her serrated knife.

The larvae moved aside to let their mother kill their meal for them, but Steve grabbed one by the legs and, as the knife came down, he held the creature over him to intercept the blow.  It speared the larva, which let out a high-pitched, grating scream that made every hair on Steve’s body stand on end.  The boneless creature was no match for the blade, which cut through it like butter and stopped only an inch or so short of Steve’s nose.  The rest of the larvae, terrified, burrowed back into the heap of cushions.

The Queen raised the knife again with the larva still stuck on it.  She looked at it, turning it over to inspect as the infant’s legs and mouth twitched.  Then she let it drop to the floor, threw her head back, and screamed.  The sound rolled around the room like a thunderclap, shaking Steve’s bones and making the broken glass on the floor dance.  When the Queen looked down at Steve again, her silver eyes had turned dull red.  She’d been angry earlier.  Now she was _furious_.

Steve fought his way out of the mess of pillows, climbed over the dead larva, and ran.

The Queen was right behind him.  A soldier who was in her way got stepped on, and died with a crunch.  Furniture was crushed and curtains and pillars torn down.  Steve ran for the entrance door, the one he’d resisted the urge to zip through on the scooter.  It was closed, of course, but he wasn’t looking for an escape.  He was looking for a place to try a trick he’d seen in a music video.  He ran straight _up_ the wall as far as he could before gravity got the better of them, then did a flip to land on his feet again.

He’d intended to reach the Queen’s arm or leg, to join Thor and Natasha in creating that chink, but instead she batted him right out of the air.  Steve went flying and crashed into the wall, taking out one of the pillars that supported the balcony and hitting his head, hard.

That was something else he’d had to learn about the serum once before – that time by having a truck dropped on him.  Steve’s body was only _almost_ indestructible.

When his ears stopped ringing he staggered to his feet, only for the Queen to grab him again and start beating him against the floor as the Hulk had once done with Loki.  This was too fast and too violent for him to have a hope of fighting back.  Blow after blow passed through him, until his vision faded into bright lights on gray and his bones felt like they were rattling around inside a loose bag of skin.  He was only dimly aware of Thor plunging one of the fishhook weapons into a joint of the Queen’s gauntlet to make her let go, and then carrying Steve into another side room.

Thor must have figured out some of the technology in the room, because the door began to close, but then the Queen got a hand in and began trying to wrench it back open.

“Why didn’t you zap her?” Natasha demanded.

“I cannot!” Thor said.  “I don’t know how to make the lightning without Mjolnir!  Hemsworth never told me!”

If he hadn’t known it would hurt, Steve would have laughed out loud.  Maybe it was because his brain was bruised, but at that moment it seemed _hilarious_ to think that by switching them back to their own bodies, Loki had actually ruined their plan and doomed them all.  It was so amazingly ironic, Steve had to wonder if Loki had done it on purpose.

The door groaned as the Queen tried to force it, then made a horrible screeching noise as the mechanism gave up and stopped resisting her.  She dragged it all the way open.  Natasha pulled Steve to his feet and helped him stagger further back into the room, while Thor took up a position in between them and the Queen.  He looked around for something to use as a weapon, and pulled an axe-like object off the wall.  Like the Queen’s serrated knife, this was a ceremonial weapon, ornate and jeweled and nearly nine feet long.  It would have to do.

Then, quite unexpectedly, something large moved behind the Queen.  For a moment Steve couldn’t identify it, then his eyes managed to focus and he realized it was the Leviathan.  How was that possible?  They were all in here, the actors were either still fighting off the dogs or else already dead, Musa was dying… that left only the Watcher, and he’d already said he couldn’t intervene.

Steve smiled again, because if the Watcher _were_ intervening, it was somehow perfectly fitting.  After all Stan Lee’s complaining earlier, it was _just right_ that they would be saved by a _Deus ex Machina_.

The Queen must have noticed the movement out of the corner of one of her eyes.  She turned, saw the Leviathan, and then just stood there, as if unsure how to react.

Curious, Steve made himself sit up a little, finding an angle at which he could see between the Queen’s legs.  The Leviathan wasn’t flying, and the Watcher wasn’t the cause.  Musa was kneeling there, holding it over her head like a basketball, and then she literally _threw_ the entire spacecraft.  It knocked the Queen flat on her back, while the Leviathan itself bounced off her, flew over Steve’s head, and crashed into the giant wardrobe against the far wall.  Bits of armor and jewelry spilled across the floor.

For a moment Steve was shocked, wondering just how strong Musa _was_.  Then he remembered what Thor had said about the Leviathan being suspended in its own antigravity field.  From an outside perspective it weighed nothing at all.  There was a lot of antigravity and artificial gravity out here, he observed, and things getting stuck in fields and so forth…

His smile grew wider.

“Steve, stop that,” said Natasha.  “Stop grinning, you look like a madman.”

“No, no,” he said.  “I’ve got an idea – and this time I _know_ it’s a good one.”

He started trying to get up.  It was an effort, but if Musa could throw a Leviathan when she only had one leg, he could get up after being bashed against the floor a few times.  Every inch of him ached, and one knee made a worrying _pop_ sound, but everything seemed to hold.  The only thing he could compare the pain to was when he’d awakened in the hospital after taking down the three helicarriers in Washington.  Back then he’d felt like he couldn’t have moved if he’d tried – but he _hadn’t_ tried.  Now he did try, and he stood.

“Come on,” he said to Natasha, “we have to get her to the window.”

The Queen, too, was picking herself up.  Steve sidled past her while she was looking in the other direction, and stumbled over to Musa.  Incredibly, she was conscious and no longer bleeding, though she was panting on her hands and knee.  Steve put a hand on her back.

“See if you can make it to the Leviathan,” he said.  “We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as we’re off this ship.”  It would delay their heading home, but she had more than earned it.

Musa blinked at him, then looked down at her missing leg.  “What?  This?  It’ll grow back.  Stings a little, that’s all.”

“What, really?” he asked.

“Really really.”  She nodded and kissed his cheek.  “Go get her, Christine!”

The Queen was back on her feet now.  Steve staggered towards the open door.

This time, he and Nat were careful to skirt the nest where the remaining larvae         were still hiding.  At least one of them was letting out a series of short, yipping cries, calling for its mother.  The Queen stopped next to the nest to pull her knife out of the dead one, and the charged Steve again, scrambling along in a bear crawl on her legs and two arms.  It was all he and Nat could do to keep ahead of her.  He began hearing glass crunch underfoot as they approached the giant windows at the far end.

They’d blasted through the largest of these with the Leviathan, but the layers of force fields outside were keeping the atmosphere in.  They’d also contained a great deal of the wreckage, which was floating around aimlessly, glittering in the light of the nearby planet.  The gravity ended at the wall.

The Queen’s knife came down directly in front of Steve.  He tried to duck to the side, fell, and cut himself on the broken glass, but just barely avoided being speared like an hors d’oeuvre.  The point of the blade struck sparks on the tiles.

He wasn’t close enough yet.  Steve dragged himself back to his feet, stumbled, fell, got up again, and kept running.

Natasha had stopped, and was now about ten yards away.  “Hey!” she shouted, waving her arms.  She picked up a bit of broken tile and threw it at the Queen.  “Hey, bitch!  Over here!”

The Queen ignored her entirely.  Steve was the one who’d made her stab the larva.  She wanted Steve, and didn’t care about anybody else.

He kept going, skidding when he stepped on the glass, dodging blow after blow as his reflexes seemed to lag slower and slower.  Steve wasn’t exactly _tired_ , but he wasn’t doing himself any good by pressing on.  Normally he would have ignored the part of his mind that insisted he was going to hurt himself, but remembering how his ankle had gotten worse when he’d kept walking on it as Evans gave him pause.  His injuries would still do that, getting worse and worse if not properly cared for.  The process would be slower, but it would still happen.

Steve had thought he knew his limits.  Maybe he didn’t know them as well as he liked to believe.  Or maybe he just didn’t _observe_ them.

A piece of broken metal fitting had fallen from one of the windows – just as he was thinking about ankle, Steve’s leg caught on that, and he went sprawling.  Glass on the floor dug into his palms, his knees, and his shoulder as each hit the ground.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the barbed knife coming, still stained with the larva’s silvery blood, and he tried to roll out of its way.  He made it, but the blade clipped his arm, scraping the place where the larva had rasped at his skin.  His ears roared and for a moment the world went white with pain.

The Queen put a hand down on top of him, pinning Steve face-down to the ground and grinding the broken glass into his chest.  By her shadow on the floor in front of him he saw her raise the knife, preparing to take his head off.

“Thor!  Now!” shouted Natasha.

Thor made a running start and shoved the Queen with all his Asgardian strength.  He scooped her off her feet and flung her straight through the broken window, where she tumbled, howling, into the void.

Steve waited until he could hear something besides his own hammering heart and then picked himself up, bloodied and shaking, for a look.  The Queen hadn’t gone far.  Her flight had been stopped by the force field outside the vessel, but it was about a hundred feet from the window and now she was stuck there, flailing in zero gravity as she tried to get back to the ship.  There was nothing within reach for her to push off, and the atmosphere within the field was not thick enough to swim through.

Natasha came to help him up, and Steve heard her snort.  “It would be adding insult to injury if I laughed at her, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

“You have my permission,” he said.

The main door at the other end of the royal chamber flew open, and Chi’Tauri of all sizes and ranks came rushing in.  Steve groaned.  He was probably still _capable_ of fighting, but that didn’t mean he _wanted_ to.  After everything that had happened in the past week or so he just wanted to lay down somewhere and sleep, perhaps for another seventy years or so.  He didn’t have that option, though.  He saw Thor assume a defensive stance, and Natasha moved to stand between Steve and the oncoming aliens.

A moment later, however, it became clear that the Chi’Tauri were not the least bit interested in them anymore.  They went right past the three Avengers to the window, where they began climbing on top of one another, forming a chain to reach the Queen.  After an astonished half-second, Steve and the others seized the opportunity and ran for the Leviathan.

It seemed like miles.  Steve stumbled along with Nat’s help, while Thor leaped up to the mezzanine to find out what had happened to the actors.  As much as Steve _wanted_ to be optimistic about that, he knew that Evans, Johansson, and Hemsworth had been dropped into the fight with the dogs while it was at its worst, with no warning.  What was he going to tell Downey?  Or Mrs. Hemsworth?

Steve climbed the tube into the craft, and found Musa lying on her back on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling.  For a moment he feared the worst, but then he saw her chest sink as she breathed out.  He patted her cheek.

“Musa?” he asked.

Her eyes re-focused on his face, and she smiled.  “You’re _amazing_ , Christine,” she told him.

“You’re pretty amazing, yourself,” Steve replied.  “Do you know what happened to the Watcher?”  He still hadn’t seen the man.

Musa shrugged, which was not a graceful gesture for somebody who was lying down.  “He’s the next best thing to a god, even more than the Asgardians,” she said.  “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Steve decided that would do.

By the time Steve and the two women had struggled up to the cockpit, Thor had returned.  He was carrying the unconscious Tom Hiddleston over his shoulder like a potato sack, but was very gentle as he laid the man down on the floor.  Loki was right behind him, holding something wrapped up  in his black cape, and to Steve’s surprise and relief, Evans, Johansson, and Hemsworth were bringing up the rear.  All had suffered a few minor injuries, some of which would probably require stitches, but all of them were also _alive_.

“You’re okay!” said Natasha, delighted.

“Yeah!”  Evans sat down heavily on the floor next to Musa.  “I can’t believe it either, but Loki…”

“Ah!”  Loki held up a finger.  This was clearly an order to be quiet, but Evans just shook his head.

“Loki gave up and froze them,” he finished.

“And _you_ ,” Loki said imperiously, “are never to tell another _soul_.”

“I don’t need to,” said Evans.  “It was in the movies.  In our universe, _everybody_ knows.”

Thor laid Hiddleston down on the floor.  If Loki had looked bad after casting his illusions in the brig, Hiddleston now looked as if he were at death’s door.  He was chalk-white, and casting the spell seemed to have actually consumed some of his body mass.  His cheeks were sunken, and there were dark circles around his eyes.

“Is he gonna be okay?” asked Johansson.

“He will need time to recover again from the energies he had to channel,” said Loki.  “I imagine he’ll live, though – mortals can be unexpectedly resilient.”  He unwrapped the cape he was holding, and took out the tesseract.  “Now, let us finally put an end to this nonsense.”

This was all Loki’s nonsense, Steve thought – Loki was the one who’d gotten them into it.  Mentioning that would only start an argument, though, so he took the controls of the Leviathan while Thor pulled the fuel crystal out from under the console.  The craft groaned in protest as Steve raised it from the ground, and he momentarily feared it would refuse to fly.  It did lift off, though, and he guided it carefully out of the side chamber before taking off not for the broken window where the Chi’Tauri were dragging their queen inside, but towards the skylight in the roof, and went through that.

Beyond this there was another set of layered force fields.  They hadn’t had nearly enough time to rev the Leviathan up to full speed, so they hit them with far less force than they had the ones outside the rear window.  Each layer brought them almost to a complete stop, and the engines, wherever they were and whatever form they took, whined in protest as they broke through one after the other.  Steve found himself gritting his teeth, half-expecting the entire machine to disintegrate at any moment.

“How are you doing down there?” he asked, glancing down at Thor and Loki.  They had somehow connected the tesseract to the crystal, and the latter was starting to shine blue at its base.

“It’s filling,” said Loki.  “Slowly.

“We do not have the proper equipment,” Thor explained.  “If we let the energy move freely it will destroy us.”

Steve checked the rear display.  It seemed that the soldiers had succeeded in pulling the queen back inside, because the mothership was moving again now.  It rotated slowly so that it was broadside to them, which was odd until Steve remembered that the engines on one side had been partially destroyed by the clusters of mining charges.  The angle it chose was designed to use the remaining engines to best effect – they fired, and the huge ship began to move.


End file.
